Her Darkest Memories
by Shalyn H
Summary: Catherine gets a late-night call from her sister. Their mother is on her deathbed. The two meet up at the hospital expecting to say goodbye, but instead find themselves caught up in a morbid journey through their memories and childhoods in Silent Hill.
1. Farewell

**DISCLAIMER**: Silent Hill and related characters, events and locations are ©Konami Entertainment. All fan-characters are ©Shastina L. Helmers. The views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Konami Entertainment or any other related companies. Any brand names used throughout the story are © of their respective owners. Without further ado, onto the story!

. . . . .

_Catherine…_

Catherine twitched in her sleep. She unconsciously reached for the pillow and pulled it to her chest, clutching it close. Still, the voice kept on.

_Catherine! Open your eyes and look at me!_

She shivered as a cold chill ran down her bare legs. Near her feet, a fat tabby cat lay curled up on the edge of the bed. Her round green eyes looked up and she raised her head as Catherine let out a little moan.

_Catherine, you little witch, don't ignore me! I-AM-YOUR-FATHER!_

Catherine's eyes snapped open and she gasped, bolting upright in bed. The cat stood up and stretched, its sleek orange fur glistening in the cold white moonlight that spilled in through the parted curtains and cast shadows over the twisted sheets on the bed. As Catherine struggled to gain her wits about her, the tabby crawled across the bed and curled itself into an elegant ball on her lap. She chuckled and stroked its fine coat.

"Thanks, Abby."

Abby the tabby purred as she looked up into her mistress' matching green eyes. Catherine's body was wet with cold, clammy sweat. The breeze filtering in between the curtains chilled the sweat on her skin so that it made her even colder. The cat on her lap was the only thing that was warm. Catherine pet her for a few more moments as she collected her thoughts, and then slipped a hand under Abby's plump belly and hefted her up, placing her aside with a grumble of protest from the animal.

"Sorry, but I need to get up."

Catherine's apartment was dark. Outside, the sky was a deep violet the shade of raw iodine and pinpoints of starlight shimmered against it like distant headlights. The chilly tile on the bathroom floor made her bare feet ache as she made her way across it to the sink. She turned the faucet handle and cold water issued from the spout in a steady stream. When the temperature had reached her liking, she cupped her hands together under it and let her palms fill with warm, clean water, which she leaned forward and splashed across her face. It felt refreshing, and it helped. She felt her body slowly returning to its normal temperature.

She sighed. It had been a long and taxing week, and losing her office job had left her life in a fragile state of limbo. The bills wouldn't wait for her to find another job. Her mother was getting weaker as the days passed, and the illness was overcoming her body faster than she could heal. She wasn't gaining any ground in her battle. Soon, the next hospital bill would arrive and Catherine would have to find a way to come up with the money.

Catherine looked at her reflection in the mirror. Why did Claret have to be the one to inherit their mother's physique? Her own body, she felt, was rather strangely proportioned and bore far too much resemblance to their father. She always hated her wide ankles and knobby knees. Her eyes were her mother's, and that much she was grateful for. They were wide and green and a little almond-shaped. At least Claret had gotten father's eyes: squinty and blue; and they always gave their owner an air of infinite suspicion. Her own were more friendly and welcoming.

Her hair was thick and blond, and it ran past her breasts to her slender waist. The muscles in her small frame were well-developed. It seemed that working out at the gym was one of the only things she could do to escape the oppressive walls of her apartment these days. All of her other hobbies involved profuse amounts of time indoors, and that was more than likely not good for her.

The phone rang, piercing the silent air with such a shrill sound that it made Catherine jump. Abby walked past her and disappeared down the dark hallway, assumedly to hunt spiders or utilize her facilities. Catherine made her way into her bedroom where the cordless phone sat on the stand beside her bed. A little red light flickered on the handset when it rang. She stretched out her hand and took the phone, and immediately, an inexplicable feeling of discomfort overcame her.

"Hello?" she asked quietly. There was a long pause.

"Catherine? Is that you?"

Catherine felt as though a fist had squeezed around her heart and was attempting to pull it somewhere into the pit of her stomach. Hearing that voice at this time of night meant only one thing. It was the call that she had been dreading for the past several months.

"Yes," was all she could manage to say. After all, what did she really have to say to her twin sister after ten years of separation?

"It's…it's about mom," Claret said. Her voice was stiff. At least it makes her uncomfortable to talk to me too, Catherine thought with a tiny flicker of satisfaction.

"What happened?" Catherine asked, genuinely concerned.

"I think…you should come down to the hospital. The doctors are saying that she…" There was a long silence.

"She isn't going to make it?" Catherine said calmly. The words sounded strange and remote as they escaped her lips. It was a fact she had already accepted long before the phone rang, but it was still difficult to come to terms with.

"No," Claret said at last. Catherine had always been closer to their mother than she had their father, and it was one of the reasons that the two sisters had never gotten along. There were times when Catherine had been sure that Claret was wishing death upon the ailing woman, if only to be sure that she received her part of the inheritance.

"I'll get down there right away."

"I think they got the paperwork mixed up. They were supposed to call you first," Claret said to her briskly. She sounded a little disgruntled. "I'm on my way but it might take me a little longer. I'll be there as soon as I can."

Catherine was sure this meant that Claret was going to show up at the last minute and stay just long enough to sign the paperwork before she hopped back into her Mercedes and drove back to her fancy suburban home in whatever yuppie town she came from.

"I'll see you there," she said, and even to her, it sounded a bit like a threat. Claret hung up without saying goodbye.

Catherine placed the phone on the cradle and ran a hand through her long hair. The last thing she wanted was to see her mother, pale and sickly, her face shadowed by death; but she knew that she couldn't let her mother die alone in a sterile hospital room. She got dressed as quickly as she could. She pulled on a plain colored t-shirt, a pair of faded blue jeans, her running shoes and a hooded sweatshirt, which she zipped almost all the way up to her throat. As an afterthought, she pulled a scarf from a hanger in her closet and wrapped it around her neck. She gathered her hair into a ponytail and tied it off with an elastic band. When she was ready, or as ready as she could be for what was to come, she lifted her keys from the hook by the door and glanced at Abby's food dish. There was food and water enough to sustain her until much later in the day, so she left the apartment and locked the door behind her.

She descended the stone stairs, lost in thought. How long had it been since she'd been to that place? It couldn't have been much more than a week or two. She hated hospitals, but she would visit her mother whenever she could, though her mother was rarely aware of her presence. The illness had deteriorated her mental faculties, and there were several instances when the two women would be engaged in perfectly normal conversation, and her mother would suddenly break into a fit. The fits were usually marked by a sudden distant expression and a glazing of the eyes. It would be followed by screaming, senseless babbling, and even physical violence. The woman would thrash and flail and do more damage to herself than anyone else. Dementia aside, she was generally either doped up on meds or, on a rare occasion, just being herself, watching the little television above her bed or sketching with her weakening hands.

Catherine pressed the button on the key-ring alarm remote and the headlights of her Jeep flashed twice. As she reached for the handle, a sudden thought occurred to her. Was it coincidence that she dreamed of her father for the first time since she began therapy on the night that her mother was to die? Did it have something to do with the unexplainable connection she shared with her mother? And worse: did her father have something to do with her mother's illness?

But no, that was silly. She took medication for this kind of irrational paranoia. Her mother's illness was natural, as cruel as it seemed. Catherine remembered that her mother had been growing increasingly depressed and physically weak after their father moved out of the house. Claret moved out as soon as she turned 18, and on the same day, Claret and her mother had gotten into a fierce argument. Her mother was never the same after Claret renounced her family ties to her mother, and it was from that day on that Catherine felt her terrible dislike for her sister truly pronounce itself as full-blown hatred.

Catherine's Jeep sped along the freeway until she reached the hospital in Brahms. Brahms was a sleepy town, not so far from Silent Hill, where Catherine and her family had once lived. It was a far away memory now, though Catherine had a feeling she would return to that place sooner or later. It would have been just as well if she never had to see the opaque fog over Toluca Lake or the charred spot where the Gillespie house once stood ever again. As she thought about that place, a new memory came to surface. It was the memory of the day she received notice of her father's death.

He had been living away from the house for several months. Catherine and her sister were living with their mother. She couldn't remember exactly how she had gotten word of it, or what had happened to him. All she could remember was a woman's horrible grief-stricken howls as she sobbed.

_He's dead! He's dead! Father Dennison…_

It had begun to rain. Thick drops were pelting her windshield, and without even noticing it, she had turned on the wipers to keep her view of the road clear. She was able to safely reach Brahms in less than a half hour after leaving her apartment. She pulled her Jeep into a parking space in the Visitors section. All of the smaller surrounding structures were closed, but the hospital was full of lights. At last, the apprehension had begun to set in and it was accompanied by a sense of dread. It seemed to go deeper than just her mother's impending death. What was it about hospitals that she hated so much?

She remembered the laundry list of reasons as soon as she pushed open one of the double doors at the entrance. The inside of the waiting room was illuminated by glaring fluorescent lights and smelled like alcohol and industrial cleaners. The chairs were filled with people on the waiting list for urgent care. There was a woman cradling a squealing, red-faced baby, a man and his two sons, one of which was holding his arm at a very strange angle, and an elderly man that seemed to be gently chiding his wife, who was looking rather green. There was a family of six that were all crowded around a single girl with ice on a sprained ankle. There was a young-looking man holding a motorcycle helmet and sitting by himself. He seemed to have no visible ailment whatsoever, but what disturbed Catherine most was that she couldn't tell whether or not he was breathing. His chest never seemed to move.

Catherine approached the front desk and addressed the middle-aged, round-faced nurse on the other side of the thick glass.

"Excuse me, my name is Catherine Dennison. I'm here on an emergency call from Dr. Richards to see my mother, Abigail Dennison."

"Dr. Richards?" The nurse turned the name into a question, and she began searching a clipboard that was apparently a list of staff names. "We don't have a Dr. Richards. We have a Dr. Edward Rogers," she said finally.

"What?" Catherine asked, incredulous. "Are you kidding me? He's worked here for years. Dr. Pat Richards. Could you please look again?"

The nurse looked annoyed, but she checked the clipboard again. Catherine wondered if she was even really looking, or just humoring her.

"No Dr. Richards," she said again firmly. "What's your mother's name?"

"Dennison," Catherine replied, unsettled. "Abigail Dennison."

"Dennison…Dennison…" The nurse's fingers were skipping across the keys as she referenced the patient records. "Ah, yes, of course. Head in the door around the corner there and to your right is an elevator. Go up to the second floor, and it's the fourth door on the right. She's in room 406."

Catherine did her best to memorize the directions as she muttered a quick thanks to the nurse and shuffled toward the door. She pushed it open and entered the quiet hallway. It was strangely devoid of doctors and patients alike. She had expected to see a lot of bustling and commotion behind the doors, but there was a thick, humid stillness that made her skin crawl.

She found the elevator to the right of the door and pressed the 'up' arrow. The little button glowed orange and she could hear the pulley system on the elevator whir as the big box climbed from…below? She was sure she was on the base floor, so why was the elevator coming up? Was there perhaps a basement where they stored supplies and medications?

The elevator stopped and the steel doors slid open. She stepped into the elevator and pressed the number two button. The doors closed, but nothing happened. She pounded the button again several times before she realized that the elevator, for whatever reason, was broken and wouldn't take her to the floor she wanted. She would complain about it later, if she remembered to do anything after seeing her mother.

_Okay,_ she thought, _I'll just go to the third floor and take the stairs down. Stairs are easier to go down than up._

She pressed the number three button and the elevator whirred to life. She had always hated elevators. Her hometown, Silent Hill, was a much more rural place than Brahms, and she had never spent much time in any of the few buildings that had elevators. The only place she could think of that had them was the hospital, and she never went to hospitals if she didn't have to. She couldn't remember a time that she had been inside the hospital in Silent Hill, but she could remember what it had looked like within the walls of the big white building...

As she pondered the strangeness of this fact, she reminded herself that she knew better than to press the thin wall of psychological therapy and medication that kept her memories at bay. Sometimes it was better to accept things than to draw on their memories. Memories were not good for her. Instead, she focused on the uncomfortable little jolt as the elevator came to a halt and the doors opened.


	2. Last Wish

The third floor was even more abandoned than the first. The hallways were not as adequately lit and she couldn't help but take note of how empty they were. All she could see were doors with small windows on top of them and the etched tags marking the room numbers on each door. She looked around for any indication of signage that might help guide her to the stairwell. She knew it couldn't be too far from the elevator. She turned right of where the elevator was, and found what she was looking for. A blue sign with white text pointed down the fluorescent-lit north hallway and a picture of stairs marked its location in that direction.

She followed the hallway and found herself surprised and slightly disturbed at the fact that she still hadn't met any personnel along the way. As she glanced through the windows into the patient rooms, they all appeared to be dark and unlit. She wondered if maybe the hospital was undergoing construction on this floor that might render it inconvenient for frequent use.

_But then,_ she wondered, _why would they even allow access to this floor? Isn't letting visitors wander around areas that are under construction dangerous? I would think they'd do everything they could to avoid a potential lawsuit._

She made her way to the end of the hall without encountering a single soul. The stairwell was through the door just to her right, and it was marked with the same picture and a text heading that read "Stairs to 2nd & 4th floors." She turned the handle and pushed the door open. The stairwell was moderately lit, and she was grateful that the light wasn't as glaring and intense as it had been on the first floor. In fact, she had taken notice of the decreasing amount of light as she descended the hallway.

She headed down the stairs toward the second floor. As she went, she heard footsteps coming up towards her, and she was grateful to meet someone else. In a few seconds' time, she came upon a solemn-looking doctor with a shock of white hair and thin-rimmed glasses perched high on his crooked nose. He was climbing the stairs from the floor below and sliding a pen into his pocket while he clutched a clipboard under his arm.

"Doctor," she called out to him as he came into view. She searched for his nametag, but he seemed not to have one.

He looked up at her, but did not smile.

"If you don't mind me asking, where are all the patients? It seems really empty."

"I beg your pardon?" he said, and he stopped walking. He was standing a few stairs just above her now.

"Where are the patients on the third floor?" she asked again, slightly annoyed. Surely, he couldn't have misheard what she'd said. The stairwell was so quiet that her voice echoed throughout it.

"Oh," he said dumbly. "We're moving everything to a new building across the street. We've been relocating our patients over there too."

"I see. I'm surprised no one informed me," she said suspiciously. "Why is the hospital moving?"

"They're building a larger facility. We'll be adding a psychiatric ward and hospice to the new building."

"That makes sense," she replied. "But isn't it strange to have the third floor accessible to the public if no one is here?"

"I…don't know," he said. He seemed to be focused on something else, and rather eager to leave her company. She nodded to him politely.

"Alright, thanks," she said.

His head jerked as though he'd been hit by something, and his smoky gray eyes wandered rapidly around the stairwell. As she looked at him in a mixture of confusion and repulsion, he seemed to regain himself and continued up the stairs without saying anything else. She wondered if it had been some sort of violent tic.

_I don't remember the staff being so…unaccommodating, _she thought wonderingly. _They've always been generous in answering questions and spending time with people…and what was with that twitching? Maybe he has some kind of condition,_ she answered herself. _And more importantly, what happened with Dr. Richards? I know for sure that's what his name was...even Claret said it on the phone. _

She climbed the rest of the way down the two flights of stairs to the second floor. At the bottom, she came upon a red-painted door with a white number "2" on it. She turned the handle and pushed. The door swung inward, and she left the stairwell behind as she stepped out onto the second floor. The door clicked shut behind her. It clicked so loudly that it sounded as though it had locked.

If the first and third floors were empty, the second was desolate. The fluorescent lights overhead were turned on, but only one bulb in each panel of four seemed to be working, so that the lighting was hardly enough to be considered sufficient and the functioning and nonfunctioning lights made a strange checkerboard pattern across the ceiling. She felt a little surge of indignation rise in her chest. What were they thinking, clearing out patients and leaving her mother alone in a sterile little room on this dark floor? Could the doctors even see well enough to get by along the hallways? She thought about the doctor she encountered earlier, and his preoccupied nature. It seemed that the quality of staff here was worse than before, and she silently cursed herself for not visiting her mother again sooner. Maybe she could have foreseen the degradation of conditions and had her mother moved to a nicer facility.

Presently, she came upon the fourth door to the right as the nurse in the waiting room had indicated. The panel on the door read "Room 406." The lights were turned on, but they were dim. She turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The first thing she noticed was the uncomfortable noise of static, which she quickly realized was coming from the TV mounted high on the wall opposite her mother's bed. She had been expecting to see a nurse, a doctor, or both standing watch over her dying mother or bustling about her bed. Instead, the room was empty but for a curtain divider that stood between the vacant bed closest to the door and her mother's bed. She could hear the short, steady beeping of the heart monitor as she approached, bracing herself for the worst.

As Catherine rounded the corner of the divider curtain, she gazed down at her mother. Abigail Dennison lay silent, catatonically staring up at the snow and static of the TV. She was as transfixed as if watching a very intense movie, and she didn't seem to notice Catherine's presence.

"Mama?" Catherine said softly. Abigail's pale emerald eyes never moved to her daughter. She didn't even so much as blink. Catherine knew she was still alive by the rhythm on the heart monitor, and she could see the woman's frail-looking chest rise and fall with short breaths.

"Mama?" she tried again, and she moved closer to her mother's bedside. Catherine could see the extent of her condition up close. Raw-looking sores speckled the pale, grayish flesh of her mother's arms and legs. Her eyes looked sunken and there were heavy shadows under them. Her bone structure seemed to jut unhealthily out, as though she hadn't been getting any nourishment. Her body was thin and weak. Her hands trembled on the sheets. An IV was connected to her inner arm, and she was breathing through thin tubes that ran up into her nostrils. She still didn't look at her daughter.

"Mama!" Catherine said more urgently, and this time, she put a hand on her mother's shoulder and gently shook her once. Abigail gasped, and rolled her unnaturally bright eyes up to gaze upon the face of her daughter. She squinted and seemed to consider her for a very long moment before speaking in a fragile, cracked voice.

"Kitty? Is that you?"

Catherine sighed with relief. At least her mother's last moments wouldn't be spent in a comatose state. She knew who her daughter was, and that she was at her side.

"Yeah, Mama. It's me, Kitty."

"Where's Claret?" Abigail asked, her eyes swimming with confusion.

"She's on her way, Mama. We're here because Dr. Richards called us. He said you weren't doing so well."

Catherine felt a lump rise into her throat, but she valiantly fought it down. She couldn't afford to break in front of her mother now. She knew her mother needed strength, not tears.

"Mama, where _is_ Dr. Richards? No one seems to know that he works here. Why isn't someone in here with you?"

Abigail's eyes showed distant confusion for a moment, and then she looked up at Christine.

"I don't know, Kitty. I don't remember."

Catherine stared down at her mother. Tears were welling up in the sick woman's eyes, and her face was scrunching into a pained expression. Catherine felt the fist squeezing her heart tighten its grip. She knew her mother was suffering a great deal.

"Kitty, I want to go home. I want to go back to the house. I don't want to be here anymore. Please take me home," she pleaded, and her expression was sincere. Catherine stared down at her mother in a mixture of pity and fear. She had no idea what to do, and she didn't want her mother to continue enduring the pain. Why did it have to drag on so slowly?

"Mama, I can't. It's too dangerous to take you off of all these machines. They're keeping you alive. I don't think your body could handle the trip."

"Please, Kitty," Abigail pleaded again, and thin streaks of sticky tears were glistening on her cheeks now as the drops rolled down into her silvery blond hair. One of the nurses had braided it carefully so it wouldn't run wild.

"I'd love to Mama, but I can't…the doctors won't let you leave."

Even as she said the words, she wasn't sure she believed it. She probably could've walked out, equipment and all, without anyone noticing.

"Kitty, I have to go home. I have to."

Catherine closed her eyes. She couldn't bear much more of this.

"Kitty…I have to go back to Silent Hill. Someone is waiting for me there."

Catherine looked up abruptly.

"Who?"

Abigail stared at her as though she hadn't heard the question. Catherine spoke again, very slowly.

"Mama, who's waiting for you in Silent Hill?"

"Kitty, please…please take me out of here. It isn't safe…something's wrong with this place," Abigail said desperately, and her voice was barely above a whisper.

For once, Catherine agreed. Something was definitely strange about the hospital. She didn't like the idea, but she felt that her mother had a right to die the way she wanted, and where she wanted. She sighed with defeat. Her mother was stubborn if nothing else.

"Listen, Mama. I'll go find Dr. Richards and I'll ask him what our options are. Maybe we can arrange for you to visit the house."

"No!" Abigail said urgently. Catherine blinked at her mother in surprise. "Don't…don't leave," she begged. Catherine stared at her, unable to speak.

"Mama, what's wrong? Why are you so scared? What's going on here?"

"I can't explain it, Kitty," Abigail said slowly. She looked terrified now. "But please believe me. I know that being sick makes me act irrationally sometimes, but I'm telling you that I am thinking quite straight right now. I don't know how long it will last, and I need to do this before I forget. Please, Kitty. Please do it...for me."

Abigail looked up into Catherine's eyes, and Catherine knew there would be no fighting her mother. The only thing left to do now was to plan her best route of escape.

"Are there any exits other than the front doors? Is there a back door or side door I can get through without being noticed?"

"There's a back entrance for the ambulances," Abigail said, and her eyes were as bright as they had been in her youth. It scared Catherine.

"Okay. Listen to me, Mama. We're going to have to—"

But Abigail was already pulling the IV out of her arm. She forced the bandage over the hole where the needle had been with a little wince, and fresh blood welled up beneath it. She pulled the oxygen tubes from her nostrils, and with a burst of renewed strength, she swung her legs over the edge of the hospital bed.

"Mama, slow down! Don't hurt yourself!"

"There's no time, Kitty. We have to hurry!"

"What about Claret?" Catherine asked, suddenly remembering her sister. What would Claret do if she saw her carrying her mother from the hospital?

"If she isn't here by now, then I'm going to assume she isn't coming. She doesn't care for me much anyway," Abigail said, brushing this off as an irrelevant fact. "But you can help me, Kitty. Please, give me our shoulder. I'm still a bit weak on my legs."

Catherine did as she was told and pulled her mother's thin, bony arm around her shoulders. The skin felt like clammy leather, and she shuddered, slightly repulsed. She scolded herself inwardly for her reaction and helped her mother to her feet. The hospital gown graciously covered her body enough to retain her dignity. Catherine helped her mother towards the door.

"Is there any belongings you need from here?" Catherine asked her.

"Just my sketchbook," Abigail said. "I need that. It's on the bed stand there. Give it here," she said rather demandingly, and Catherine was surprised by her tone. Her mother had never struck quite so commanding a note with her before. She gingerly half-carried her mother to the bed stand where a black hard-cover sketchbook lay with a slender strip of ribbon in between the pages near the middle. As soon as she picked up the journal, Abigail took it from her hand and clutched it to her chest protectively.

"Please, let's hurry," Abigail said hastily.

Catherine carried her mother across the room and out into the hallway. She looked both ways. No one appeared to be coming, so she made her way to the elevator, following the signs to find her way. She approached the elevator and pressed the button several times quickly. She knew it wouldn't make the elevator go faster, but it was a psychological appeasement at any rate.

The elevator doors slid open and Catherine helped her mother into it. When the two were safely inside, she pressed the button for the first floor. At any moment, Catherine knew they could be caught, but she wouldn't let them hold her mother against her will. There was no one to contest them as they made their way down the hall toward the back of the building. Catherine could feel the terrible scent of iodine and isopropyl alcohol filling her lungs with every breath. Beneath it was something else; a more sinister scent that reminded her of rust and copper. It reminded her of red.

But the red wasn't coming from the smell of blood. There were lights mounted on the top of an ambulance parked in front of the double doors that led outside, behind the hospital. Catherine poked her head out and scanned the empty alley. There didn't seem to be anyone there.

_What? _She thought to herself. _This doesn't make sense. Who would park an ambulance and just leave it here, with the lights on?_

But then, what kind of facility would call the family of a dying woman and instruct them to come down and say their goodbyes, and then leave her to die alone in her room?

Catherine quickly helped her mother through the doors and outside. The air was sharp and cold on their faces as they made their way to Catherine's Jeep. Just as they had crossed the parking lot, a wine-colored Mercedes screeched to a halt less then five feet away. The window rolled down and Catherine's eyes fell upon the face of the driver. It was nearly identical to hers, but for piercing blue eyes, a more rounded jaw and a slightly higher forehead.

"Catherine, what the hell are you doing?!" Catherine's twin sister Claret demanded.

"She wants to go home, Claret. She won't take no for an answer."

"So you're dragging a dying woman out into the cold street? Catherine, she's sick! She doesn't know what she's asking! How did you even get past the doors?"

_You haven't seen the security in there_, she thought to herself. Before she could respond, her mother spoke.

"Claret, come with us. I want you to come with us," she begged.

"Come with you where? Where are you going?"

"To Silent Hill," Catherine replied.

Claret became silent for a long moment. Her face was significantly paler when she finally spoke in a half-whisper.

"This is madness."

"I know," Catherine said truthfully, "but I'm not going to let Mama die there in that hospital. Claret, there was no one watching over her. They left her all alone to die. No one was even in the hallway or any of the surrounding rooms. They even told me that there is no Dr. Richards!"

"What? How the hell is that possible?" Claret said sharply. Her tone was high-pitched, and Catherine realized that in spite of the bad blood between them, Claret was as scared and concerned for her mother as she was. It filled her with a little reassurance, however small.

"I don't know," Catherine continued quickly. "I don't know how much time Mama has left, but she really, really wants to go back to the house. Please, Claret…let's just do this for her."

Claret hesitated, and for several moments, the only sound to be heard was the engine of the Mercedes purring beneath the hood. At length, Claret looked up at the two women.

"Get in," she said. "I'll drive you. It'll be a smoother ride in my car," and she regarded the Jeep Catherine had been heading to with distaste.

Catherine ignored her rudeness and opened the rear passenger door. She carefully eased her mother into the back seat and buckled her belt. Abigail looked weak and tired but grateful. When she was secure, Catherine opened the front passenger door and slid into the seat. She buckled her own belt and focused on something outside so that she didn't have to look at her sister's stern face.

"Thanks," she mumbled into the window.

"I'm not doing this for you," Claret snapped.

"Please, girls," Abigail said weakly from the back seat. After that, no one spoke.


	3. Into The Fire

When Catherine awoke, she found herself lying on a bed of uncomfortable prickly things. As her vision slowly came into focus, she could make out a few details about her environment: tall trees surrounding her, their looming branches shadowing her body. Tthey inclined as if listening to her breathing, scattering twigs and leaves across the ground. Shoots of tall grass poked up between moss-covered rocks, and a cold breeze whispered over the surface of the leaves and made them skitter like so many insects. She was in a forest, and both the fallen leaves and the ones still quivering on the trees were shades of red, brown and autumn gold.

As she recalled the car crash, her first thought was her family. Were they okay? Were they injured in the crash in some way she couldn't have seen at first glance? Where were they? Then her mind switched gears: _How did I get here? Where am I? _

She slowly pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. Her head felt heavy and bruised, and as she reached a hand up to touch her face, she could feel dried blood encrusted onto the smooth skin of her cheek and forehead. She delicately touched where her head had hit the window, and it protested with a shrill of pain that made her cringe and close her eyes until the world stopped spinning.

_Stupid,_ she said to herself, _what might you be thinking? Poking it isn't going to make it feel better._

She carefully eased herself to her feet. The forest was dark and quiet but for the shuddering leaves that made it seem alive. There were small, glittering things scattered across the leaves near where she lay. As she leaned in for a closer look, she realized that they were pieces of a broken headlight. The crash couldn't have happened too far from here…could it?

She looked around for signs of a hill, but could see none. It didn't seem likely that she had fallen from the passenger seat and rolled downhill. How did those pieces from Claret's broken headlight get here, then? The forest didn't look very well kept, and it was unlikely that anyone would have been driving through. There were no roads here.

There was, however, a leaf-strewn footpath that seemed to wind deeper into the forest. The trees so thickly blotted out the sky that she couldn't tell which direction she was going. She decided that the only way to go would be forward, and she would do her best to find her way to somewhere that might have a phone she could use to call Claret. Claret, she knew, would have her cell phone on her. Catherine had never owned a cell phone, nor felt the need for one, except for now. She began to walk along the footpath. There wasn't much to see around her, and she didn't see any signs of life as she went.

She walked for what seemed like hours, but couldn't have been more than forty-five minutes. As she walked, she noticed that the forest around her had begun to seem familiar. Somehow, she knew where she was going. The air began to carry a particularly different quality. It grew thick and a dark gray fog was wafting out from between the trees. A curious smell began to fill her nostrils, and in an instant she recognized what it was. It was the smell of burning wood. Somewhere up ahead, something, perhaps even the forest itself, was on fire.

She felt reckless heading toward it, but she was sure that if something out here was on fire, the local authorities would most likely be there trying to put it out. She would be able to find someone to help her get to civilization once the situation was under control. She couldn't understand just what it was about the forest that made it so familiar, but she pushed the thought from her mind as she made her way toward the source of the fire.

She could see the flames several feet before she came to the clearing in front of the burning house. It was a two-story country home, and the chipping white paint was curling in the heat of the flames that licked at the side of the house through the windows. The roof had already partially collapsed, and the fire, which seemed to have started in the second floor and spread to the base floor, was growing in heat and intensity. She could feel it even from where she stood. With a sudden sharp pang of realization, a thought hit her with the force of the Mercedes crashing into the guard rail.

This was her house.

As she stepped out from between the trees, she saw the silhouette of a woman wearing a white dress. The smoke was blowing against her, and her long, glistening blond hair was tinged with threads of silver as she turned and looked into Catherine's eyes. Their eyes locked, and Catherine saw that it was her mother. The white dress was the hospital gown billowing against her sickly-thin legs. Catherine watched as her mother approached her and reached out, forcing the black leather-bound sketchbook into her daughter's hands.

"You have to take this," she said forcefully. "You'll need it."

Catherine did not refuse, and instead clutched the book in her hands as if it were the last thread of hope left for her. She looked up into her mother's eyes; the eyes that were her own.

"Mama, what's going on?" Her voice sounded small and childlike.

"I told you, Kitty," she said gently, brushing loose strands of blond hair from her daughter's young face. She smiled and took her face in both hands, kissing her forehead. She wasn't cold anymore. The flames must have warmed her skin. "Someone is waiting for me."

As Catherine looked up at her in confusion, she suddenly turned away from her daughter and broke into a run toward the burning house. Catherine felt her limbs frozen, her legs anchored to the ground with fear and bewilderment. Surely she wouldn't...

"MAMA, NO!" Catherine screamed, and she ran forward, her body suddenly springing to life as she realized with a sick churning in the pit of her stomach what her mother was about to do.

Abigail disappeared inside the flames of the burning house, and as Catherine closed in behind her, the front archway over the door collapsed into a hail of embers and ash. It stung her eyes and she had to throw up her arms to shield against it. She began to search desperately for a place where she might break through the burning wreckage and get into the house to save her mother before it was too late.

A pair of hands clamped onto her shoulders as she leaned forward to run in, and she desperately struggled against them. Pale arms wrapped around her chest and held her from running into the house. Someone was calling her name, but it sounded far away. All she could think about was saving her mother, but she knew it was already too late. The flames had overtaken the front of the house now, and they were pressing against the darkness of the forest, casting orange and red light across the trees. The oppressive heat made the tears that billowed from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks sting like acid.

"Catherine, stop it! Stop it, you can't do anything!"

It was Claret. As Catherine realized that it was her sister holding her back, her body slacked and she sobbed freely, collapsing to her knees. Claret eased herself down with her. There were tears in her eyes as well, and her chest was jumping with little sobs. Claret wrapped her arms around her twin's injured head and carefully held it to her chest. Catherine closed her eyes and dissolved, overwhelmed with too many thoughts and emotions. She wrapped her arms around her sister and cried and cried until Claret finally took hold of her shoulders again, forcing her to meet her eyes.

"Cat, we're going to have to get out of here. The house could catch the whole damn forest on fire. Hurry, I know where to go."

She dragged Catherine to her feet and the two of them began to race through the forest. Catherine could feel the air grow colder and thinner as they made their way away from the hellish scene while the wreckage of their childhood, and their mother, burned behind them. When they were far enough away and neither could run any longer, they both stopped to catch their breath, and continued on at a brisk walk.

"I don't get it," Catherine said. "She seemed fine! She seemed scared, but aware and normal, like she knew what she was doing. I don't get it, Clare. Why would she do this? How could I let her?!"

Claret couldn't find anything to say, so she remained silent. Catherine suddenly remembered the sketchbook that her mother had given her, and she looked down at it in her hands. Now, it suddenly seemed evil, and she had half a mind to blame it for her mother's suicide. As she walked, she turned it in her hands and lifted the cover. The first page was blank but for elegant, wispy scrawl across the middle that read "Abigail Maureen Creswell-Dennison."

"What's that?" Claret asked, trying to see over her shoulder.

"Mama's sketchbook," she said absently. Claret jogged to catch up and walked beside her. Both girls slowed their pace until they finally stopped.

"She gave it to me before she…" Catherine trailed off. She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence, and anyway, Claret understood.

As Catherine turned the pages, she found herself gazing over a beautiful collection of her mother's drawings. The first several were extraordinarily detailed portraits of various patients, doctors and nurses from the hospital in Brahms. There were smiling faces and solemn ones, and one of them, a pleasant-looking man in his fifties with a round face, Catherine recognized as Dr. Richards.

"Look! That's Dr. Richards. I wish I had this picture to show them in the hospital when I brought up his name. I can't believe the nurse didn't know who he was. She must've been new," Catherine said.

The next few seemed to be images from Abigail's memories. There was a drawing of a mother bathing her two baby girls in a basin. The woman, who surely must have been what Abigail looked like when the girls were young, had a lovely smile on her face and her long hair was pinned up into a bun on the back of her head. The babies were grinning and covered in suds. There was another of a woman in a blue dress with her back turned, standing in a field of flowers with her arms spread wide. The sun shone through clouds in the sky, and the magnificent shading in the drawing made the ethereal glow of it come to life. There was another one of a dock where dozens of sailboats floated silently on the surface of the water, gulls weaving in between their patterned sails. There were a few drawings of various animals. There was a drawing of the labrador that Abigail had had before she had met the girls' father. There was another drawing of a young boy, possibly their uncle Thomas, sitting on the back of a white horse in full riding uniform.

Catherine couldn't help but admire her mother's artistic ability. Even as the sickness had demented her mind and made her hands weak, the drawings stayed beautifully detailed and the images filled her with warmth.

"They're amazing," Claret said softly. "Mom was really talented…" she trailed off, for 'was' tasted too bitter in her mouth.

"Yeah," Catherine agreed.

As she turned the next page, she felt a cold chill run down her spine. It was a drawing of the house that was burning far behind them. It was the house where they had grown up for twelve years of their lives, as it had been when it was in its prime: the hedges in the front yard were pruned to near-perfection, the porch swept clean, the grass cleanly mowed and the windows washed. It brought an aching feeling of nostalgia to Catherine's chest, and she was finding it hard to breathe through the grief that still gripped her heart. She couldn't help but feel that the house looked a little eerie and strangely empty without any people in the picture.

As soon as she turned the next page, it was as though she was looking at a very different artist's work. Here was a picture of a girl sitting at a window, and her face was turned so that only her ear and the round curve of her cheek were visible. The window had been filled in with shading so that it looked like there was nothing but darkness beyond it. The next was a picture of a woman with an equally indiscernible face, her body half-hidden in shadows, and an ominous smirk on her thin lips. Next was a very detailed picture of a dimly lit hospital hallway with a strange figure standing at the end of it. There was a picture of a man with what looked like swords in his hands standing over something bundled on the ground, and this picture Catherine had to move through quickly, for it made her feel uneasy. The last picture, however, made both Catherine and Claret's blood run cold.

It was a picture of the same house, almost as perfectly detailed as before, but this time, it was engulfed in flames. Two figures were standing in front of it, and in the background behind the house, a strange symbol was glowing in the flames. Seeing it made Catherine's head throb fiercely with pain, and the muscles in her jaw tightened as she winced and tried to clear it.

"What _is _that?" Claret asked tremulously, indicating the symbol in the back of the picture.

The picture began to shake fiercely before Catherine's eyes. The pain in Catherine's head redoubled, and then tripled. It intensified until it was so strong that it brought her to her knees, still clutching the book in one hand against her chest. She heard something that sounded like a distant steam engine's horn, but it grew louder and alternated pitch almost like a…siren?

"Catherine, what's wrong?!" Claret asked, looking down at her twin in alarm. Catherine moaned.

"My head…it's…it burning!" she cried, and she clutched her head in one hand. Claret put a hand on her shoulder and leaned over her. Catherine was sure she could feel the flames inside her head, scorching her brains, stealing her breath and burning her lungs. The sound seemed to be moving closer to her, and now it was screaming so loudly in her head that she couldn't hear Claret's voice anymore as she called out to Catherine desperately. Her vision was filling with red light. The last thing she remembered was seeing Claret's panicked face before she blacked out for the second time since their trip from the hospital to Silent Hill.


	4. Devil's Coming

Angry voices floated up from below the stairs. Two little heads poked over the polished wooden railing and inclined to better listen to what they were saying. One was crowned with golden blond hair. The other had charcoal black hair tied back into ponytails with sunflower barrettes. The darker-haired one wore a sky blue dress with white lace trim and white stockings. The fair-haired one wore a plain gray dress and her legs were bare.

"Paul," the woman pleaded, "honestly, you can't believe that. It's getting so bad that she can hardly even go to school these days. She comes home with some type of injury almost every week."

"There's nothing we can do to help her," the man named Paul replied sternly. His voice was rough and deep. "If she should be punished by her peers, it is because it is God's will. She should not even have been born, Abby. You know that."

"No child is born to suffer!" the woman shot back angrily. She continued relentlessly: "What sort of merciful God would give life to a little girl, only to make her suffer and live as an outcast, simply for being born against a prediction? What did you want me to do, have an abortion?" Abby's voice rose until it cracked.

"Yes! That would have fixed EVERYTHING!" he screamed back at her. The anger in the air was palpable, and Abby seethed. When she spoke, it was in a tone so vehement that a fully grown bear would have backed down.

"Paul, you may have everyone else under your thumb, but I'm not buying into it. If you keep this ridiculous charade up at the expense of my daughter, I'll…" She trailed off ominously. Her hands were balled into fists and a bright flush was spreading from her face to her chest.

"You'll _what_?" Paul asked threateningly, and he stepped closer so that he was practically nose-to-nose with the woman. "What are you going to do, Abby? You seem to forget your place, _woman_!"

"God will judge you," she said, jabbing her finger into his chest. "And he's going to make you pay for what you say about your daughter. Mark my words," she finished, and she wiped her hands on her apron as if washing them clean of his presence. She stormed out of the kitchen before he could say anything else. He was left standing there in her wake, watching her golden hair disappear around the corner. He ran a hand through his short black hair and turned from where his wife had gone. The lines in his face became more pronounced and his grimace was accentuated by the coldness in his blue eyes. He adjusted the sleeves of his white dress shirt beneath his black sweater, and then left the room, his dress shoes clicking against the wood floor sharply with each step. The sound faded off to the other side of the house.

"Why is daddy so mean to you?" asked the little girl with black hair, addressing her sister. The blond child was sporting a fresh black eye, thanks to Molly Matthews, one of her classmates. The bruise was purple and green, and pinkish around the bridge of her nose.

"I wasn't supposed to be born," she replied automatically. The words sounded rehearsed. "Daddy says I'm a demon and a witch, and that you're supposed to be a Priestess."

"But I don't wanna be a Priestess," the girl with black hair protested. "I wanna be Claret. And you're not a demon _or_ a witch. You're Cat, my li'l sis!"

"I think you're the only one that says that," Catherine said, wincing as she touched her face gingerly.

"Well, who cares what they think, anyway? Let's go play in the trees!"

"But Mama says we can't," Catherine said solemnly. Claret scoffed.

"So what? We'll just go for a little while, and then when it starts to get dark, we'll come back and they'll never know! We can just say we chased a bunny into the trees and came right back."

Catherine considered this. It _did_ seem like fun.

"Okay," she said finally. The two girls clasped each other's hands and crept down the stairs. They made it all the way to the bottom without the floorboards creaking. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they peeked around the corner. Their parents were nowhere to be seen.

"Hurry, let's go!" Claret whispered. She pulled Catherine to the door quietly, and the two girls snuck outside. The door closed almost silently behind them, and they crept across the front yard to the side of the house where it was darkly shaded by a tall tree with low-hanging branches. From there, it was just a quick dart across the well-mowed lawn into the safety of the forest trees and shrubs.

"Last one to the wishing stone goes to Hell!" she said, and the two girls took off at a full run into the forest.

Catherine didn't want to go to Hell most of all, because everyone seemed convinced that she was going to go there. She ran through the trees and across the soft ground as quickly as she could. Only a short distance ahead, she could see her sister's gorgeous raven-black hair lashing behind her as she ran. The two of them raced against each other until they were running side-by-side, dodging branches and rocks as they tripped and pounded toward the wishing stone. It was a boulder in a small clearing where a tree had fallen and sunlight shone through like a spotlight. They both reached the wishing stone at the same time. The two girls giggled and fell across the soft earth, rolling in the bed of fallen leaves.

"You didn't beat me this time!" Catherine said with a grin. She seemed to have forgotten all about her black eye.

"You're getting faster!" Claret said approvingly. Catherine smiled and looked up. The trees cast leaf-shaped patterns across their faces.

"What do you wanna be when you grow up?" Catherine asked her twin.

"I wanna be a Princess," she replied, and her tone melted into dreaminess. "I wanna have a big white castle by the ocean, and I want a big white horse and maids, but I'd be real nice to them."

"That sounds really nice," Catherine replied, lost in her imagination as she drew a mental portrait of her sister's luxurious future.

"What do you wanna be?" Claret asked her sister in turn.

"I wanna be a doctor for animals. I want to take care of doggies and kitties and make them better when they get sick."

"I don't like doggies," Claret said, crinkling her nose. "Especially Bones."

"Bones?" Catherine turned the name into a question.

"Yeah," Claret replied, glancing at her sister. "Bones is this doggie that comes around the fence near the recess yard sometimes. He's really skinny and he's always eating food that people drop on the floor."

"I've never seen him," Catherine said wonderingly. Of course, she didn't go out to the recess yard much. Going too far from teachers usually meant getting beat up. "Is he nice?"

"Well, he doesn't bite," Claret said. "But he scares me and sometimes I think he might. He's skinny but he's real big and his teeth are yellow. The other kids say that sometimes he howls at night, and if he howls, it means somebody's gonna die."

"Wow," Catherine said raptly. "Scary…"

"Hey, do you wanna come with me to Bobby's house tomorrow after school?" Claret asked Catherine. Catherine blinked a few times and looked up at Claret.

"Really? Do you think I could?"

"Sure! I'm sure he won't mind."

"Okay," Catherine said, and the idea made her giddy. She'd never been to any of Claret's friends' houses before, and she didn't have many friends of her own. She only had one friend, and he hardly ever talked to her. He certainly never invited her over.

"It's getting dark," Claret said. "We should head back home."

"I'll race you," Catherine said. Claret giggled as she got to her feet, brushing off her dress. Catherine did the same.

"Okay! One, two…three!"

Both girls took off at a sprint. They bolted through the trees and over the ground the same way they had come, and made it to the side of the house where they quickly pretended to be playing with caterpillars on the flowers when they saw their father coming out of the house. He stopped as he saw them and regarded them both for a moment. His expression was strange and confused. Then he smiled, a wide and bright smile that lit his face, and he reached out and lifted Claret into his arms.

"How's my favorite girl?"

"Fine!" Claret said, giggling as he swung her around. Catherine continued playing with caterpillars.

"Are you doing well in school?"

"Of course, daddy."

"Good! If I see good grades on your report card, maybe you'll get something extra-special as your reward."

"Really?" Claret asked, momentarily forgetting about her sister. "What do I get?"

"It's a surprise," he said, and he winked at her as he put her down. Then his expression changed and grew stiff and callous. He regarded Catherine as if she were an aphid in the act of ruining his flowers.

"And just what do you think you're doing?" he asked, his voice full of annoyance.

"N-nothing," she stammered, and she dropped her eyes quickly. She knew better than to look him in the eyes.

"Good. That's what bad little girls should be doing. Wipe that stupid look off your face."

"Daddy, stop it," Claret begged, but he ignored her as if he hadn't heard her.

"Yes sir," she replied numbly.

"Just the look of you makes me sick. Sooner or later, the devil is going to come for you, and he's going to take you out of my sight once and for all. Isn't that right, Catherine? The devil's going to come for you, isn't he?" He was smirking, and from the glance she caught of him in her peripheral vision, Catherine thought that he looked like a shark.

"Yes sir," she said quietly.

"Daddy, stop it!" Claret cried, but he still ignored her.

"You and your mother both," he said disgustedly, and he spat off to the side. "One of these days, you both—"

Claret cut him off with a hard kick to the shin. He looked at her in surprise, and the darkest, most murderous look twisted his face.

"Get in the house," he whispered stormily, "before I kill you."

Claret grabbed Catherine's hand and the two of them ran inside the house as fast as they could. When they were inside, Catherine wanted to stop running, but Claret wouldn't let her. She heard their mother call out to her, asking what was wrong, but Claret never slowed down. She pulled Catherine into their bedroom and slammed the door as hard as she could. The walls shook with the force of the contact.

"I'm sorry, Claret!" Catherine said, and she was starting to cry. Tears were welling in her eyes.

"Don't be," Claret said angrily, and she suddenly looked much older than she was. "Daddy can be a real jerk. Sometimes I just wish he'd die," Claret said, and she looked away.

"You don't mean that," Catherine implored. Claret sighed.

"I guess you're right. But I wish he'd stop being mean to you," she said. "I don't even want a special surprise for my grades. I just want him to be nice to both of us."

Catherine lowered her head, feeling terrible for getting her sister in trouble.

"Come on, don't cry," Claret said, and she put her small arm around her sister's shoulders. "We get to go to Bobby's tomorrow, remember?" She smiled, and Catherine couldn't help but smile back.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"We're going to have lots of fun. He has all kinds of games we can play, and Isobel is coming too!"

Isobel was a friend of Claret's, and one of the few that Catherine really liked. She was a grade older than the twins, but she treated them both very nicely. She always seemed tired for some reason, but Catherine couldn't remember seeing her upset or unhappy.

"Claret?" Catherine asked timidly. "Can I sleep in your bed tonight?"

"Of course!" Claret said, smiling. Hers was the only bed in the room. Catherine slept on a blanket on the floor. There were some nights when she would sneak into bed with Claret, but it was seldom that she dared sleeping in the bed. Once, her father had caught her and made her sorely regret it.

"Can we put the chair under the door just in case?" Catherine asked, and her hands were already on the wooden chair that pushed into the single desk that their father had bought for Claret's schoolwork.

"I think that might be best," Claret said, and she helped Catherine lodge the chair under the door handle. It acted as the closest thing they could get to a lock on the door. When they felt safe enough, the two girls changed into their sleep clothes and curled up under Claret's maroon blanket together. It was warm and comfortable, and Catherine knew that she was safe next to her sister. It wasn't long before the two girls were asleep.

. . . . .

Claret gazed out in front of her. Catherine had just disappeared before her eyes. She couldn't make sense of anything that had happened in the past few hours, let alone her sister's sudden vanishing. She decided that there was little else she could do now but make her way out of the forest before it caught fire.

Claret made her way through the trees, remembering how she and Catherine used to play among them when they were younger. She remembered the wishing stone, and she wondered if it might still be there in the little clearing. She knew that the place where it had been was nearby. Being back in Silent Hill after so long was strange. Everything looked so different, and yet still similar, as though it had somehow been preserved. It was almost as though it had waited in stagnancy for their return. Claret shivered at the thought and cursed herself for being silly.

She made a great effort to keep her thoughts from returning to her mother as she stalked through the trees. The change in scenery helped, and she forgot everything else as she came to the little clearing where the tree stump had grown over with moss. There, now devoid of the patch of sunlight that used to shine on this spot, was the wishing stone. She jogged up to the spot where it stood, still buried in the ground but more weathered with age and nature than she had remembered it. As she leaned down for a closer look, she could see writing in what looked like white paint. It was sloppy, childish scrawl.

_THE DEVIL IS COMING FOR ME CLARET _

_HELP ME_

"What?" Catherine said out loud. Was this Catherine's idea of a joke? Had she passed through here and written this recently? She touched the paint, but it was dry and flaky, as though it had been there a very long time. It didn't make sense. Had Catherine written it before she left Silent Hill?

As though Claret's thoughts had decided the timing, her cell phone began to vibrate in her back pocket. She leaned up and reached back, sliding the device from her jeans. A red jewel charm dangled from a thin silver cord looped through a hole made in the plastic specifically for the purpose of such accessories. As she read the caller ID, she felt a chill of suspense. The number was blocked, but she was sure it would be Catherine. She quickly flipped the phone open.

"Catherine?"

A rush of loud static greeted her on the other end so that she had to jerk the phone back from her ear as if it had burned her. As she held it a short distance from her head, she could hear the fizzing static and a voice cut between waves of it.

"Claret—me, Catherine—wrong—s…I think—your help—are you?"

"Catherine?" she called out, without letting the phone get too close to her ear, for the static was overwhelming. "I can't hear you, there's too much static. Are you okay? Can you try calling me back?"

"Claret!" Catherine's voice sounded desperate. "He—for me!—your help—in—Hospital."

"Catherine? Catherine, hello? Are you okay? What's going on? Where are you?"

Claret heard a beep and as she looked down at the phone, two words appeared:

_CALL LOST_

She felt a surge of panic for her sister that drowned out the message she had just read on the wishing stone. And then she thought of something: what had Catherine been trying to say? Was she trying to say that someone was coming for her?

Claret decided to move as quickly as she could. She took off at a sprint. If there was one thing she still remembered how to do from her childhood, it was run. She had always been faster than Catherine, and whenever Catherine had won their races, it was because she had purposely slowed down. She hoped that her speed would help her now before something terrible happened to her twin. She couldn't stand the thought of losing two members of her immediate family in the same night. A distant thought occurred to her:

_You hate Catherine. Why are you so worried about her? _

The answer she came up with so quickly was simple one.

_Because she's your sister._


	5. Bloody Murder

Catherine groaned and touched her forehead. She was beginning to wonder how many times throughout the course of this nightmare she was going to keep waking up in different places.

The question went unanswered. For a moment, she panicked and thought that she was blind or worse…but as she groped around on the cold tile floor, she realized that she was surrounded by thick, inky-black darkness. There were no lights on, she realized, and the air was thick with humidity. She could feel her clothes sticking to her clammy skin. The darkness around her smelled of sweat and mold, and she slowly began to separate out other scents. There was bleach, rust, iodine, and the one scent she hated above all others. It was the scent that told her where she was: the smell of isopropyl alcohol. Her hand touched something wet and she recoiled in disgust.

She was inside of Brookhaven Hospital.

She remembered very little of this place. Somehow, she had known the inside of it, but she couldn't remember a time that she'd actually been inside. She remembered seeing the white building from the outside, and thinking of all the horrors that went on within its walls. How many people died, or lay dying? How many people had terrible injuries or incurable diseases? How many people went in and never came out? The thought shook her to the core, for her she was, inside those very walls she had once stared at with such fear and dislike. She began to wonder if she'd ever come out.

Slowly, she felt along the wall, her fingers groping for something, anything that might bring light to the dark hallway. Why was it empty? Perhaps it had closed down. She chose not to even bother wondering how she'd gotten here, because that question still hadn't been answered from the last time she asked it, back when she awoke to find herself laying in the middle of the forest near her old house, until…

She quickly forced the thought from her mind. She needed to focus, and that wouldn't help. As her hand traced the wall, at last, she found what she was looking for. Instead of a switch like she had expected, it was a flat button. She slid her hand to the top of it and pressed. In an instant, bright fluorescent bulbs flared to life and momentarily blinded her. She shielded her eyes against the onslaught of light and waited for a minute to adjust. She slowly opened her eyes to slits, then halfway, and then fully. She looked around and took in her surroundings, doing her best not to focus on the small details, which usually sent her wild imagination off on tangents.

She was standing in the corner of a white-walled room with a door to her left. Locked cabinets behind steel diamond-grate cages held countless bottles of pills and liquids. Boxes of surgical instruments and equipment were stacked high around the walls in a neat and organized fashion with labels on each of them. There was a computer sitting on a desk between two sets of locked drug cages and an old dusty filing cabinet was crammed underneath the desk. Books and papers littered the top of the desk. It seemed like this was some sort of inventory room.

Catherine decided immediately that she wanted out of the hospital. It was overly quiet and difficult to breathe in the stale air. She approached the door and turned the handle. It opened easily. She peered out into the hallway. With the exception of the light spilling from the open door, the hallway was just as dark as the room had been before she had turned the lights on. Darkness was something Catherine hated more than hospitals, and the idea of both of them together was almost unbearably. She felt a rush of nausea creeping up on her and she fought it down. She desperately wished she had not forgotten her anxiety medication at home, and she didn't trust herself to try and find an alternative in the inventory room. The gates were locked anyhow.

She returned inside the inventory room and set herself to looking for something she could use as a light source. The first idea that came to mind was the desk. She shuffled through the drawers and found an emergency kit with folded paper instructions on what to do if different events occurred, a first aid kit, and a small black LED flashlight. She grabbed the flashlight and flicked it on, and it cast a bright blue-white beam onto the ceiling above her.

"Convenient," she said to herself quietly. Her own voice seemed to cut the silence like a sword.

She ignored the paper instructions, as she seriously doubted there were directions for surviving a nightmare; for she was sure that's all this was. Instead, she pocketed the first aid kit and shone the flashlight ahead of her as she made her way out into the dark hallway.

The hospital looked like it hadn't been used in quite a while. The paint on the walls was peeling and the tile floor was cracked in some places. She decided to try heading right first. She had no idea if she was on the base floor or not, so she figured that if she could find a sign or an elevator, she'd have a better idea of where she was. As she made her way down the hallway, she could hear her footsteps echoing on the walls louder than they should have. She almost had half an urge to begin singing, but if she was in any sort of danger, she didn't want to alert anyone to her presence. Not that her shoes were helping matters any.

She suddenly became aware that the tile floor near her was streaked with something wet and red in thin trails that looked like wheels that had run through something. She had a thought, but it was too sinister to put to words. She felt like turning and running the other way, but she thought to herself, _it's too late now. This is all just one big nightmare anyway. What's the worst that could happen? _

As she neared the end of the trails of what she had now accepted as blood, her reckless courage began to give way to fear. The scent in the air had begun to change to something sour that reminded her terribly of sun-baked road-kill. She felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickle as she made her way closer to where the trails ended like some demented version of Dorothy following the yellow brick road to Oz.

In front of her stood a gurney with a blood-soaked white sheet pulled over a suspiciously human figure stretched out full-length. The sheet did not move, nor did the figure beneath it. She knew with sickly fascination that this was the source of the rotting smell, and something burned within her. Every part of her senses told her to leave, to run away, not to look at the thing under the sheet. Another part of her wanted, no, _needed_ to see what was stretched out on that gurney. A part of her needed to know that this was real, and that her senses wouldn't be dulled with sleep if it were a nightmare. She reached a hand out and was amazed to find that she had been shaking without realizing it. Slowly, she pinched the corner of the sheet.

_Why am I doing this?_

She closed her eyes and folded the sheet back only slightly. When she forced her eyes open, what was left of her courage was drained from her in an instant. She covered her mouth to suppress a cry and turned away quickly as her stomach lurched. A figure, whether it had been man or woman was no longer discernable, lay on the gurney like a skinless heap of meat. The flayed person had been cut open, no, _eaten_ open, and had been completely eviscerated. Mutilated intestines and organs swam in a soup of blood and bile. She sank to her knees on the ground a few feet away. Her stomach couldn't withstand it. Her mind couldn't even process it. That thing that had once been a person had been brutally, viciously murdered, and it took but seconds for her to realize that whatever had done that, as it surely could not have been a human, could still be in the hospital with her, watching her.

She scrambled to her feet and clutched the flashlight as if it were her lifeline. This nightmare had gotten a whole lot more realistic, and she somehow felt sure that if she died in this world, she wouldn't be coming back in the next. She took a few slow breaths through the sleeve of her t-shirt. It was hard to breathe with the sour smell of the corpse on the gurney polluting the already impure air, and she was still panting several deep breaths later. She knew that finding a way out was her only choice.

She knew she would need a weapon, just in case. She looked around her, but there didn't seem to be anything in sight. She tried to remember if there was anything inside the stock room, but she couldn't recall anything in particular. She didn't want to go back that way in case whatever it was that had mutilated the thing on the gurney had been drawn to the light she had turned on in the stock room. She stood still for a moment, unsure of what to do, and then slowly began to trudge her way onward.

The hospital looked disturbingly similar to the one in Brahms where her mother had stayed. The rooms were set up almost the same way, and she began to follow the same paths. She didn't encounter anything particularly evil as she went. As she turned a corner, she nearly tripped over a wheelchair that was parked in a rather random location, directly in the middle of the hallway. As she moved out of the way of it, she noticed something glisten in the light on top of the black canvas seat.

There was a .9mm handgun laying on top of a blood-spattered scrap of paper. An elegant hand had written in careful script:

_A Late Birthday Present For My Love, Catherine. Love, C.R._

"C.R….?" Catherine asked aloud. She rummaged through her mind, but drew a blank. She couldn't remember anyone whose name started with a C, other than her sister Claret, and Claret's new last name was Miller. She certainly couldn't remember anyone who would have referred to her as 'my love.'

She picked up the gun and turned it over in her hands. She had never fired a weapon before, and she wasn't sure that she knew how to operate it. All she knew of guns was the way people used them in the movies. She ran her fingers over each part, reciting them in her head:

_Safety. _

_Grip. _

_Trigger. _

_Barrel. _

If anything attacked her now, at least she was armed. She couldn't count on herself to be a very good shot, but she was sure that if she got close enough, it wouldn't matter. She hoped it wouldn't come to that. She stuffed the note into her pocket and slid the .9mm into the waistband of her jeans. It pressed uncomfortably against her stomach, but it reminded her that it was there, and that was good enough. She made sure the safety was on before she stashed it away.

She finally found the elevator. She sighed with relief. If the elevator worked, she could take it to the ground level, if she wasn't already on it, and at least it would give her an idea of where she was if nothing else. She approached it and pressed the button. It lit up, and she could hear the pulley squeaking as the elevator climbed from below.

Something suddenly stirred in her mind. It was a feeling of negativity that made her stomach twist and her chest ache, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She couldn't understand what was making her feel so ill, but she had a very bad feeling that something bad was going to happen. She couldn't have known what it was.

The elevator doors slid open, and as Catherine looked up, she was unable to stifle her scream this time.


	6. Spook

Claret stared down at the road in front of her. It extended out a mere two more feet, and then dropped suddenly into mist, as though the hand of God had snatched away the rest of the road; concrete, plumbing, earth and all. She peered over the edge into the unwelcoming abyss below, and she could hear water dribbling down from a severed sewer pipe into nothingness.

"No way," she said aloud. Even as she said it, she felt something in her gut twist.

Claret squeezed her eyes shut, and with a deep breath, she slowly opened them again, expecting to see the vaulted ceiling of her bedroom and smell her husband's cologne as he dressed for work. Instead, only the same scene stretched out before her.

With nothing else to do but continue to stand and stare or find another way to the hospital where her sister had placed a frantic phone call to her cell phone, she decided to think up a plan of action. She couldn't reach the hospital from this road. Instead, she would have to wind around some of the shops and houses in the residential district, and make her way toward the hospital from the back-street the ambulances used.

Ambulances were something she was familiar with in her youth. She could remember them, red and white vans with their wailing sirens, their tires screeching as they dodged their way through traffic and yielding vehicles to their destination. Double-doors would swing wide and out would come stony-faced EMTs to scoop up a wounded patient and secure them onto a gurney for transport to the local hospital. She had ridden with her sister at least once a month. When she stopped coming along for the ride, she would clutch the handlebars of her bicycle and lean on one leg as she watched them disappear behind the back of the hospital, and then speed off on another secret mission to save the world, one person at a time.

Unlike Catherine, Claret had always liked something about doctors and nurses. They were generally kind to her whenever she needed to get checkups and shots, and she loved the brightly-colored lollipops they always gave her as a child when she cooperated and sat still while they drew her blood. The nurses often held her hand and commented on the color of her eyes or her dresses. The doctors would speak to her as if she was an adult, and it made her feel important. In many ways, Claret missed what it meant to be a child, but she never missed her childhood.

Reality was staring at her now in the form of a road that led to nowhere and an oppressive mist that seemed to be holding secrets from her. She made her way back up the street, wondering when Silent Hill had become such a desolate place. There was no one to be seen. It had become a ghost town of sorts, with empty houses and abandoned cars that were unlocked, but wouldn't start. Doors were left open to shops and homes, inviting just anyone in to ransack their contents, but it didn't seem the sort of place that had fallen victim to looters. That in itself was unnerving. The silence, the absence of life, made her feel miserable and lost in her own hometown. She thought about all the places she would have liked to visit again under other circumstances: the bowling alley, the café, and the elusive Heaven's Night bar, where she had stood in the back and watched her first boyfriend play guitar and sing for an appreciative audience.

Claret wondered how Catherine was faring on her own. It had been a decade since they had spoken, and now they were reunited in the worst of circumstances. Their mother was dead, and they were both lost in a town that had become alien to them. They had once lived in here amongst these streets and these buildings, and though she had heard the reports of the fires, the tabloid rumors, the stories of the supposed murders, and the passing tales of mysterious disappearances, she couldn't believe that any of those things would be true of her sleepy little hometown. She had always remembered Silent Hill as a place of dismal weather, but a place both aglow and alive with moving cars, tourists and suburban homes. She thought about all the places in Silent Hill she had gone with her father, and then another thought struck her.

Catherine had never spoken to her about their father.

It wasn't surprising, either. Catherine had been a problematic child from the moment she could crawl, and she heartily resisted everything her parents had tried to teach her. She was unruly and acted out on impulses. She had flash rage episodes and Claret could even remember several occasions in which her parents thought she was demon-possessed, because she would carry on conversations with unseen subjects and sometimes break into such uncontrollable fits of hysteria that it would take both parents to hold her down. The doctors had given her medication to calm the episodes, but the illness was not a physical one. Claret knew that the combined years of torment Catherine had been subjected to by the other children at school and the vicious mind-games their mother had played had done far too much damage to be repaired. Their mother had been a psychologist and a fallen angel at her practice if there ever was one.

Claret never really knew for sure what had gone on between Catherine and their father that night, or what had caused Catherine to do what she did. Perhaps there was no trigger at all; perhaps it was just Catherine's illness that had driven her over the edge. She knew that Catherine and her father had never gotten along, mostly because he would sometimes say and do cruel things to her, and that was something Claret had never forgiven her father for. Though Claret had been close to him her whole life, the knowledge of Catherine's abuse at her father's hands made it difficult to truly mourn him when he was gone. Still, Claret would never be able to come to terms with what happened. It was the reason she hadn't spoken to her sister in a decade. Not only was Catherine sick; she was destructive. Claret knew that something about Catherine made inexplicable things happen to people she didn't like. It was a tool that their mother had used to her advantage. All she had to do was convince Catherine that someone was a bad person and meant her or her daughters harm. That person usually met an unfortunate ending not long afterward. It was partially from fear and partially from resentment that Claret never made an effort to contact her sister again until their mother was about to die. Had she known things would turn out like this, she might never have contacted her at all, and she might never have felt bad about it either. Catherine was better off without Mama around. No, they both were. As she thought of all this, she felt herself growing increasingly angry and bitter.

Claret realized where she was now. She stood before a tall white building that looked like it hadn't been used in years, though cars were still parked outside in the section marked for visitors. The sign read:

"Brookhaven Hospital"

. . . . .

Catherine gaped at the inside of the elevator. All over the walls, blood had been splattered and smeared, and with a deepening sense of horror, she realized that it wasn't just blood. Something extremely powerful had jammed shards of steel shrapnel into the elevator wall and hung the flayed skin of the corpse on the gurney like an Oriental carpet on display in an art gallery.

The stairs were starting to sound like a really good idea.

"What the hell is going on!?" she gasped. As she turned away from the graphic scene, she heard a sound that made her feel even sicker than the flesh tapestry in the elevator had. It was the sound of something metal banging and dragging against the tile. A pale shape moved ahead of her.

Catherine considered her choices. She could face whatever creature rambled along in her direction and the possibility that it was a lot stronger than she was; possibly even the creature that had mutilated the person on the gurney. Or, she could take the elevator and do her best to shut out the smell and sight of human skin stretched across the wall to potentially find herself on another floor with even more spooky noises and gruesome sights. She reached into her jeans and wrapped her fingers tightly around the grip of the .9mm and drew it from her waist, pointing it ahead into the darkness and flicking off the safety. Whatever the thing was, it was coming closer, and it didn't seem to want to hang back while she made her choice. Her other hand still held the flashlight.

As the thing moved toward the light, she could see the slender legs of a woman limping along and a filthy blood-stained white skirt. As the beam made its way up the figure, it shone on an equally grimy low-cut blouse, dirty latex gloves and a thin black object with a sharp hooked end. As soon as the light spilled across the woman-creature's head, Catherine was sorry it had. A faceless head with no hair sat on its shoulders, and like some kind of morbid joke, a nurse's hat was perched on the top of it. Its face was a wrinkled plane where the skin had been stretched across it so tightly that no feature was distinguishable. A scratchy moan issued from somewhere on the head or neck. She very quickly made up her mind.

"Get back!" she cried, just in case the faceless thing was competent enough. At the sound of her voice, the nurse was practically bounding at her now. She stumbled back and hit the elevator doors, which had just begun to close. "No!" she tried to keep the elevator from closing, but something told her that sticking her foot or arm in between the doors wasn't a good idea. She had no choice but to let them close, and the worst part was that the nurse was practically on top of her now.

Without thinking, she fired a shot into the gray-skinned woman's blouse. It hit her square in the heart. At the range Catherine was at, she could hear the wet slap of the bullet pelting through meat and emerging from the other side to lodge itself into the drywall. The nurse stumbled back. Catherine's head exploded with pain.

_Click-click._

_Get back! _

_Catherine, what are you doing? _

A dark, terrible smirk.

_Are you gonna shoot me?_

A hollow, broken scream. Spiraling darkness. Strong hands, a hard slap across the face. Coldness. Emptiness. White ceiling. Blue carpet. The taste of copper. Agony.

_Please, just stop…stop it…_

_Give me the gun, Catherine._

_It was an accident…I told him to get back!_

_It was cold-blooded murder._

_Father Dennison was right._

The nurse's crowbar raked Catherine's shoulder and she stumbled back several paces, violently brought back to reality by the searing pain in her arm. Trickles of red began to drizzle from the wound and down her arm. The nurse raised her arm again, but this time, Catherine knew it wasn't going to wound her. It was going to kill her. It was going to _kill_ her.

_Shh, it's a secret!_

_One day, the devil will come for you, Catherine._

"He's here," Catherine said aloud, and she fired a second round from the gun that she now realized she had never really known for sure was loaded. But it had been, and the bullet struck true. A chunk of the nurse's skull blasted away, spilling a soupy gray ooze of brain matter and putrid blood onto the dirty floor.

Catherine's mind reeled, and again, she could hear the sound of a far-away air siren. She didn't fight it this time. She backed up until her shoulders hit the wall soundlessly, and she sank into the corner, clutching her shoulders and shivering violently. She remembered this sound now. She had heard it before, when she was a child, every time she had an episode. She needed her medication badly.

She thought of Claret, and everything went black.


	7. The Downward Spiral

Claret pushed open the glass double-doors of Brookhaven Hospital and almost instantly, an unmistakable feeling came over her. It was a connection that she and Catherine had shared, however willingly or unwillingly, for as long as she could remember. They always knew when the other was close, and when the other was in danger. There were times when Claret could physically feel Catherine's pain and the same was true of the reverse. Claret could feel an overwhelming confirmation of Catherine's presence from somewhere within the hospital. She knew she was close, but the hospital was bigger than it looked from the outside, and it might take her a long time to find her way to her twin. She could be anywhere.

Reluctantly, she entered the silent waiting room and looked around. Everything appeared to be the same as it once had when she was young and came to visit Catherine after another hospitalization. She could almost see the silver-haired receptionist, Barbara, sitting behind the desk, her thin smoker's lips pursed into countless tiny lines as she scribbled notes onto patient records and filled in appointment schedules. She could almost smell the overwhelming perfume the woman doused herself in every morning, almost hear the doctors' names over the intercom, almost smell the alcohol and cleaning agents, almost feel the life that had once been inside the walls of Brookhaven Hospital. Whatever that time had been, it had long since passed, and Claret now stood in perfect lonely stillness with nothing but the light from the glass double-doors and a single light over the reception area.

Suddenly, she was ten years old all over again, feeling awkward in the waiting room while she looked up hopefully for someone, anyone, to take her to Catherine, where is Cat? How is she? Is she okay? But no one would pay Claret any mind. When Catherine got sick, Claret was moved to the backburner. That was how it worked with the Dennisons, and it was one of the reasons that Claret had grown to loathe Catherine's illness over the years. Sometimes, she found herself wondering if Catherine faked it for attention.

She approached the elevator and pressed the button. She waited for several moments, but nothing happened. She pressed the button again. It illuminated, and she could hear the elevator, but it was somewhere above her and didn't seem to want to come down.

"Catherine?" a timid male voice said, cutting through the silence like a gunshot.

Claret whipped her head around to face the intruder and was astonished to see a very familiar face. He was tall, just over six feet with sky blue eyes and dark hair that shagged over his ears and forehead a little. His handsome face was tired and suspicious-looking, and his squared jaw was shadowed with stubble and he stood with his hands in his pockets, his head raised in an expression that Claret remembered seeing so many times in her youth.

"No," she replied. "I'm Claret, remember? Catherine is the blond."

The young man hesitated. He seemed to visibly stiffen and his voice grew considerably colder.

"Right, I remember now. I see you've gotten older, but you haven't changed."

Claret regarded him perplexedly. She knew who he was, but she had never known why he hadn't liked her. He was Catherine's first boyfriend, and something about him had made him not-alright, just like Catherine.

"Trent, have you seen Catherine? I can't find her and I'm afraid something bad may have happened to her."

"Something bad happened to Cat?" the man asked, and suddenly he looked like the blue-eyed orphan boy in grubby, torn-up jeans and a much-too-large-for-him t-shirt, looking up hopefully from the steps outside their house. Claret read something on his face that she realized she knew so well because she had seen it on Catherine's face at least a dozen times. It was pure unadulterated fear.

"Do you still live here? What happened to this place?"

Trent stared at her blankly. Claret quirked an eyebrow.

"Where are all the people? What happened to the roads?"

All of the questions Claret asked seemed to go right through him. He delicately touched his lips with the fingertips of one hand, and a sudden rush of disturbed uncertainty shifted his features into an odd expression.

"I gave her Bobby's gun," he murmured.

"You gave her _what_?!" Claret demanded. He jerked as if struck and looked up at her.

"For protection!"

"Trent," Claret barked, and she grabbed his shoulders. He jerked out of her grip and his eyes flashed with fury, but it was subdued again with fear. "You gave a very sick woman a gun after her mother just killed herself!" She had said the words so easily that it surprised even her.

"Mrs. Dennison killed herself?" Trent replied, his azure eyes agape with genuine shock.

"Yes…but…look, I need to find Catherine. Do you know where she is?"

"No," Trent admitted. "I haven't seen her."

"Wait a minute," Claret said abruptly, kicking herself for not asking the question to begin with, "What the hell does she need a gun for?"

"I told you, for protection."

"Yeah, I got that, but protection against what?"

"The demons," he said simply, as if he were surprised she hadn't guessed it.

"Demons? There are no such thing as demons, Trent. They're creatures that religions make up to scare people into believing. Remember? Even my father was good at that."

"You mean…you haven't seen them?" Trent asked, his eyes round and fixed on her face. His stare made her feel like he was looking through her, seeing into her skull and reading her thoughts. It made her shift uncomfortably.

"I haven't seen anyone or anything here. I just want to find my sister."

"Then you might want to find something to fight them off with. They'll kill you, you know. In terrible ways too. And you better not be around when the Devil comes. He's the worst."

Claret felt every muscle in her body tighten.

"What are you talking about? What devil?"

"_The_ Devil. As in big 'D.' Remember? He's supposed to find Cat. That's why I gave her that gun," and he looked triumphant.

Claret felt like the ground beneath her might give way at any moment. What kind of nightmare had she and Catherine gotten wrapped up in? Why was Trent here after all these years? What were these so-called "demons" and "Devil" doing in Silent Hill? What _happened_ to this place?

"Where did you leave the gun?" she asked suddenly.

"On the wheelchair. Up." He pointed with one finger as though that answered everything.

"Take me there," Claret demanded.

"Why do you care so much all of a sudden?" Trent asked, his face filled with mutiny. "You never liked Cat."

"She's my sister," Claret replied automatically. It was something she had trained herself to say.

"So? Abby was your mother. You didn't care about her either."

Claret fell silent.

"See? You want Cat to die, so you can have it all to yourself! Well, I'm not going to help you, Claret. I'm gonna go find Cat myself, and I'm gonna rescue her from the Devil."

"Have _what_ all to myself? And what the hell is all this talk about the 'devil?' Where did you even get that from?"

Trent stared at her coldly. That was the end of the line. He wouldn't help her anymore. He turned his back on her and pushed the elevator button. Before Claret could run to catch up, the elevator had closed and Trent had disappeared.

. . . . .

Catherine woke once again to find herself standing, strangely enough, and leaning forward with her hands against the cold porcelain of a dirty sink. As she lifted her head, her own reflection in the ladies' room mirror scared her. She couldn't help but smirk at her own jumpiness.

_At least it seems safer in here,_ she thought.

She straightened up. Behind her was a row of empty toilet stalls with their doors open, but one door at the far end near a small window on the wall was closed.

"Hello?" She called out curiously, half wondering if it was a good idea to address anyone here. No one replied. Spurned by curiosity and hope of finding another living person that wasn't mutated and trying to kill her, she made her way to the stall and leaned down, her hands on her kneecaps. Her long blond hair almost brushed the ground as she peered under the stall. She could see a pair of slender legs beneath the door and she quickly stood up, feeling a little bad for invading the woman's privacy.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's just that there's something wrong with this place, and I wasn't sure if there was anyone else here but me. Have you seen those creatures out there? Hasn't anyone called the police or anything? Hey, are you alive in there?"

She had meant to say it jokingly, but now it felt like more of a serious question. There was no response from the other side, but there was a soft shuffling as the woman seemed to be getting up and arranging herself. Then the shuffling stopped, and everything was quiet. Catherine waited, unable to help but stare in the mirror and glance occasionally at the pair of legs and glossy black heels that seemed to be standing there under the door, unmoving. The woman seemed to be waiting for something.

"Do you want me to leave?" Catherine asked. The owner of the legs didn't respond, but the legs continued to stand there and do nothing.

The door began to jiggle, as if the woman was having a hard time opening it.

"Need some help in there?"

The woman didn't respond, but she kept shaking the door. Catherine could hear her fighting with the lock.

"Here, let me help." Catherine turned away from the mirror and faced the door. She walked up and put her hand on the top of the door, expecting the lock to resist her, but it didn't. To her surprise, the door swung open easily.

And no one was there.

Catherine stared at the empty toilet. It was covered in rust and a bright red splotch of wet blood. Disgusted and completely unnerved, she stumbled back a few paces and something glinted in the light. On the top of the porcelain tank, there was a small gold locket. She wanted nothing to do with the haunted bathroom or the bloody toilet, but something about the locket drew her in. She needed to move closer. She needed to see it and what was in it.

She reached out and shuddered as she felt cold air brush her hand. It felt electrically charged and it sent prickles of static through her hand as she stretched to reach the locket without touching the bloody toilet. She finally reached it and wrapped her fingers around it, picking it up.

Inside was a picture of a woman that Catherine couldn't put her finger on, but recognized. She was pretty and she had bright red hair and freckles. Her skin was light-toned and her eyes were deep blue. She had a vibrant toothpaste-advertisement smile. On the back of the locket, the initials "L.B." were etched into the gold.

"L.B.?" Catherine asked aloud to no one in particular. She remembered the shaking door and pair of legs and quickly backed out of the stall. She closed the door behind her and when she caught the reflection of the stall in the mirror again, she could see that the legs were still standing there. She felt ice water run through her veins and she decided to leave the bathroom in a hurry. She quickly slipped the locket into one of the pockets of her jeans and shuffled to the door.

Catherine nearly collided with another woman. Startled, she immediately reached for the .9mm in her jeans, but when she saw the long dark hair and near-mirror of her own face, she immediately drew her hand away.

"Claret!"

"Catherine! Thank _God_," Claret said, and she wrapped her arms around her twin for the first time in many, many years. The two sisters embraced and Catherine felt tears burning in her eyes. When she withdrew, she was amazed to see that Claret's were full of them too.

"Claret, what's happening?" Catherine asked, looking up at her sister. The horror of everything she had experienced seemed to have caught up with her, and Claret gazed at her sympathetically. She hadn't seen anything that Catherine had seen, but she knew Catherine must have seen something terrible, because she looked much older than she had before they had gotten into Claret's car with their mother.

"I don't know, Cat," Claret said, taking her sister's hand. "But we need to get out of here." Catherine agreed, and the two of them immediately began making their way down the hallway. Catherine was following Claret now.

"How did you get here?" she asked Claret.

"The stairs. The elevator wouldn't work."

"Yeah, it didn't help me either," Catherine said, thinking back to the demonic crowbar-wielding nurse.

"Do you have the gun?" Claret asked her.

Catherine paused.

"How do you know about that?"

"Well, for one thing, I saw you reach for it before you knew who I was. For another thing, I ran into Trent, and he told me he left it on a wheelchair upstairs for you."

"Trent?!" Catherine asked, appalled. "But the note said C.R."

"Don't you remember his name?"

"...No."

"Trent Christopher Remy. He was your boyfriend, Catherine, you don't remember?"

Catherine stared at her.

"Catherine, have you been taking your medication?"

Catherine looked down at the ground.

"I forgot to bring it."

"Well, let's just worry about the here-and-now. We'll take the stairs back down and out of here, and then we'll see if the reception area phone works so we can call the police."

"I don't think they'll come," Catherine said softly.

"What do you mean?"

"I think…Claret, I think something's wrong with this place. Something is really, really wrong. I don't think anyone's left…no one alive, anyway."

"Catherine, what is it?" Claret asked, eyeing her critically.

"I saw this…body…in the hospital, just…laying there on a bed. It was torn apart, Claret. It had no skin, and its insides were all over. Don't you think someone would have reported something like that?"

Claret's shoulders were stiff and her expression was tight and repressive.

"Cat, think about it. You're under a lot of stress. Are you sure that's what you saw?"

"It wasn't a hallucination. I'm sure of it."

"You've been sure of it before."

"Well I know I'm sure this time," Catherine said angrily. "I saw it. I could _smell_ it. I'd take you back up there but there are…things…walking around."

"Things? What kind of things?" Claret said, almost a bit dismissively. Catherine felt like she was back on the little black couch, talking to a psychiatrist who was determined to convince her that she was mentally ill. She didn't like it.

"A monster. Like…like some sort of demon," she said. Claret was paying genuine attention to her now. "It was like a woman…she was wearing a nurse's uniform, but it was all wrong. It was dirty and stained, and she walked wrong…and her face…Claret, she had no face."

Claret visibly shivered.

"She attacked me. She came after me with a crowbar. Look," she said, and she showed Catherine the slice through her t-shirt and the wound on her shoulder. Catherine suddenly wondered where her jacket had gone, but she was still wearing her scarf, at least. Claret seemed not to know what to say, and she stood dumbly, considering everything that had happened so far.

"I haven't seen anything," she said softly.

"Claret, you have to believe me. Look. I'll take you back into the bathroom. You'll believe me then, trust me."

"What?" Claret asked.

Without another word, Catherine pushed the door open. She felt a strange sort of recklessness in bringing her sister into the haunted women's bathroom, but she needed Claret to see. She needed to know she wasn't crazy.

"Over here," Catherine said as she pulled Claret to the last stall where the door was closed again. A glance in the mirror told her the legs were still there. "Look, look in the mirror. Do you see the legs there? There's a woman in that stall."

Claret looked at the mirror, and then at her sister.

"Watch."

Catherine pushed the stall door, but it wouldn't budge. It was locked very tightly. She pounded on the door and shook it hard, but it wouldn't move.

"Help me!"

"Catherine, if someone's in there, they probably don't want you bursting in on them."

"Claret, you have to help me! You need to see it!"

"Cat…"

Claret looked at the mirror again, then at her sister.

"Clare, help me. Look, her legs are right there."

"Cat," she said again.

"I can't open it, Clare! I need your help, please!"

"CATHERINE!" Claret shouted. Catherine jerked back as if Claret had struck her, and she stopped shaking the door.

"What?" she asked in a small, wounded voice.

"Cat, there's nothing there," Claret said softly. She nodded her head to the mirror. Catherine turned, and she saw that Claret was right. The legs weren't there.

"But they just were," she said, bewildered. "And there's blood all over the toilet seat. Look! I found this," Catherine reached into her pocket and slid out the gold locket. She proffered it to Claret, who took it and examined it. "It was on the back of the tank," she said, hoping this would convince her sister.

"I don't believe it," Claret said, barely above a whisper.

"What?"

"Don't you recognize her? It's Lucia Bowler. I can't believe you don't remember her. She was the High Priestess of the…the…you know."

Catherine understood.

"I don't remember her."

"You should," Claret said bitterly. "She was there when you killed our father."


	8. Stains

Catherine's head reeled. She couldn't even begin to think. Her mind snapped to the first defense it knew, and she took a few shaky steps back from Claret, who was staring at her gravely now.

"Don't say that," she said angrily. "I didn't do it."

"Catherine, don't you remember?" Claret looked wary.

"There's nothing to remember!" Catherine snapped. "Don't make up lies about me, Claret!"

"Catherine, just calm down—"

"NO!" Catherine practically screamed. She swayed on her feet, and Claret reached out to steady her, but Catherine slapped her hand away violently. Claret recoiled and looked up at Catherine, stung.

"Catherine, you don't have to keep hiding it from yourself. Is this what your idea of therapy is? You were supposed to talk about it, not suppress it. The medicine won't make it go away."

"Shut _up_!" Catherine screamed, and there were tears in her eyes. "I hate you, Claret! I hate you more than anything!" Catherine sunk to her knees, and Claret looked down at her. Her look of repressed sympathy slowly began to take shape into something stormier, something more violent and terrible.

"No," Claret said menacingly, "I hate _you_, Catherine."

Catherine looked up at her twin in surprise. Her voice was deep and husky with something Catherine knew all too well from the memories of her father. Rage in its purest form.

"Now get up and stop being a child. If we don't find our way out of here, we're both going to die."

"I thought you didn't believe me," Catherine whispered. "That you didn't believe there were monsters here."

Claret looked momentarily shaken.

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Either way, we need to _move_."

Catherine stood again, but found that she could not look her sister in the eye. The memories were coming back to her now, and she knew that Claret was right. It only made matters worse.

"Claret, you know he—"

"Enough. I don't want to talk about it," Claret snapped.

In silence, the two sisters made their way to the door leading to the stairs. One set wound up all four floors of the facility to the roof. The other sat went down one floor and down again into the basement. Claret kept watch around the corners as they made their way back down to the floor below. When they reached the door to the ground floor, Claret reached out and took hold of the cold handle.

She turned, but nothing happened.

"What?" she asked, astonished. "But I just…"

Catherine groaned softly and let her back slide down the wall.

"This place is trying to kill us," she said softly.

"Catherine, stop it. There has to be an explanation for this."

She jiggled the handle again and threw her shoulder into the door, but it remained firmly locked. She kept at it for several more moments before she finally gave up, realizing that the effort was being wasted.

"I'm not scared anymore," Catherine said wearily. Claret looked down at her with disgust.

"What, are you planning on dying down here? You really want to be left to decompose in the stairwell of a hospital?"

"It's probably better than being out there with all those weird things."

"Okay, so then here's the plan," Claret said, and she folded her arms over her chest, glaring down at her sister condescendingly. "We're going to stand here in this god damn stairwell until we starve. We're not going to eat, we're not going to sleep, hell! You even have a gun. Right here, Kitty, right here!" She pointed at her forehead. Catherine looked up at her, mortified. She suddenly grew very angry.

"You're a fucking bitch, Claret."

"Back at you, _sissy_," Claret barked.

Neither spoke for several moments. The words were ringing in Catherine's ears like a funeral hymn.

_Right here, Kitty, right here!_

Catherine thought about the gun. Then she thought about the third floor.

"Why don't we try going up?" Catherine offered, a little too cheerily through the bitter silence.

"What? Why?" Claret asked moodily.

"Well, it's better than standing here playing Russian roulette in the stairwell, as you so colorfully suggested."

Claret considered this.

"Fine. While we're at it, I'll prove to you that there are no little monsters in the closet for you to be scared of."

"Good, and while we're at it, I'll prove to you that you're wrong."

"Fantastic. Let's go."

The two angry women kept their distance from each other as they prowled back up the staircase. The bitterness in the air was palpable, but for Catherine, this held a strange sense of comforting déjà vu. Fighting with her sister was an anchor of normalcy among the maelstrom of chaos they were trapped in.

Unfortunately, when they reached the third floor door, they ran into the same circumstances.

"So what, we're trapped in the stairwell now?" Claret asked aloud, pounding her fist on the door. "HEY! OPEN UP OUT THERE!" She shouted. Catherine yanked her back from the door.

"Shut UP! Do you want them to hear you?!" Catherine hissed.

"I _want_ someone to let us OUT!" Claret snapped back.

"There's only one place left for us to go."

"The elevator?"

"Absolutely not," Catherine said firmly. Claret blinked.

"But the elevator—"

"Claret, if you have never trusted me before, please trust me now," she said. "You do not want to see what's in the elevator. And I don't want to see it again either."

"What was in the elevator?" Claret demanded.

"Nothing. Come on, let's go down to the basement."

"Like hell," Claret said, planting her feet stubbornly in front of the door they had previously come through.

"It's better than standing here, and I think that's where the hospital wants us to go. All the other doors are locked."

"Listen to you," Claret said hotly. "Saying things like 'what the hospital wants' and all that crazy talk. What the hell is the matter with you? I'll admit this place is a little weird, but I hardly think it's a living, thinking thing."

Catherine sighed. She was feeling more and more tired, but she was afraid that if she went to sleep, she might never wake up. Worse, she was afraid that Claret might…

"Look," Catherine said. "If you don't believe me, try going through the door we just came through. I'll bet you ten bucks it's locked."

"Bullshit. We just went through it, look—"

Claret turned the handle. The door swung open.

And the Devil stood in the doorway.

"See?" Claret said, without looking.

Catherine's face was sheet white. She couldn't take her eyes away from him. She instantly knew who he was. She knew his face, she knew his name. She knew what kind of death he would give them. She couldn't speak.

"Catherine?" Claret asked. She could feel the icy chill of fear emanating from her sister. In spite of her own fear of seeing what it was that Catherine saw, she slowly turned her head, and for the first time since she had arrived at Silent Hill, she saw what Catherine saw.

A figure that had once been a man stood in the doorway. He was taller than a human man should have been, and his back was turned to them. As if on cue, he turned when Claret saw him, and Claret let out a whimper. His mouth was stapled shut. His eyes were covered by a studded blindfold made of leather that looked suspiciously like human skin, sewn with thick woven strands of black human hair. He was completely bald and hairless, and his skin had the shining, stretched quality of someone who had been scarred by third degree burns. It was rustic brownish gray and unhealthy black-red veins bulged from his overly muscular arms. Barbed wire looped around his neck like a brutal choker, and had partially grown into his flesh. Old, foul blood was dried in splotches and streaks all over his filthy, decaying skin. He wore only old dirty bandages wrapped endlessly around him like a demented bodysuit that made short sleeves over his arms and leggings that tattered around his knees, and a butcher's apron over them. It, too, was stained in the same foul blood.

The worst part was not his hands, which were covered in the same red-black blood, or the sharp serrated blades that seemed to grow from mutated bone, like a tree with odd branches, extending from the back of his forearms from the elbow to the wrist. The worst part was not the hole surrounded in scarred, puckered skin where his heart should have been.

It was the thing that he held in a tight, fierce grip in his right hand. It was small, no bigger than a child, and its body had been flayed so that it glistened with red-black blood, emitting an acrid, sour smell of death that permeated the air. Its hands seemed to have grown into each other so that the arms formed a useless loop behind its back. A bright red, raw globule pumped out spurts of blood where its heart should have been. It was in the process of dying, they realized. The blades on the Devil's arms had almost cut the thing's head completely off.

Catherine began to scream.

The Devil moved.

Claret moved faster.

Perhaps it was self-preservation, perhaps care for her sister. Claret couldn't decide which one had caused her to slam the door on the thing and yank Catherine's arm, almost out of its socket, and half-drag her down the stairs toward their last hope. The door that would lead them into the basement, where they would be trapped, but they might have better chances. Claret prayed the door would open. It did.

The two of them stumbled into a dark basement. A rush of foul air overcame them, but Claret slammed the door behind them and clicked the lock into place.

"W-What…W…What…" Catherine stammered, trying to gain her wits about her. Claret grabbed her sister's shoulders.

"Catherine! Catherine, don't let it go. I'm here. I'll always be here, okay? We're going to be okay. Don't lose control now," Claret urged. She couldn't afford to let Catherine have an episode. Catherine looked up at Claret, and Claret could see her sister standing before her, a lost little ten year old girl in a plain dress with tangled blond hair. She had just seen the Devil, and she could still feel nothing but remorse the words they had exchanged before the incident.

"You'll always…be here," Catherine repeated. She wrapped her arms around Claret's neck and her chest jumped with hollow sobs. Catherine felt thin, so thin. So sickly and so thin.

Claret gently pried her sister off and looked at her seriously.

"Cat, listen to me. We need to keep moving. We don't know…" She drew a deep breath. She had never expected to see anything like this. "We don't know if he's still behind us or not. Come on. We have to find something to fight back with, or some way out of here. There has to be another way up. Maybe the elevator?"

"The elevator doesn't sound like such a bad idea anymore," Catherine said feebly. Claret took her hand and squeezed.

Just ahead, a sliver of light shone from beneath a door. The two girls made their way toward it and Claret put her hand on the handle. It was strangely warm to the touch.

"Get ready," she whispered. Catherine nodded, and pulled the handgun from her waist. She aimed it at the door as Claret twisted the handle and pushed it open.


	9. Killing Angels

The room was desperately bright in comparison to the rest of the basement. Catherine shuddered and drew closer to her sister, her hands shaking as she tried to steady the gun. Up ahead, a woman stood with her back turned to them. She was gazing with a look of affection and amazement at an elegant, elaborate painting that hung on the wall. The only things in the room other than the woman and the painting was a clean, empty gurney, an equally empty rubbish bin, and a door to the right of the painting that seemed to lead into a brightly-lit room. They could see the blue-white light through the glass window over the door.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" the woman said suddenly, interrupting the stillness. After a long moment of silence, Claret looked around and spoke.

"What is?"

"The painting. It was done by Alfred J. Greene. He was one of the most talented artists of our generation, and one of the finest, most pious men I've ever had the pleasure of meeting."

The woman turned to face them. The look on her face was calm but filled with weariness. Her skin was fair and delicately lined with age. Her cheeks were dappled with freckles and her strawberry-blond hair was breast-length and naturally streaked with silver. It had been cut into a neat layered style at one time, but it had grown out of the cut and now hung in stringy curls. It was her eyes that stood out the most. Her left eye was a deep, chocolate-brown, and her right was a shocking blue-green.

"Who are you?" Claret asked suspiciously.

"My name is Helen Marino. I've been guiding the children and protecting the people of the Order since High Priestess Lucia disappeared."

Catherine and Claret both took an immediate position of distrust with the woman.

"Don't look at me like that," she said through laughter. "You should be more grateful that we've been protecting you."

"Protecting me?" Catherine piped in. "Protecting me? Is that why I was attacked by a psychotic zombie nurse with a crowbar? What kind of protection is that?"

"Protection from yourself, my dear," Helen said tenderly, as though she were talking to her own child. "You know how they say, 'the mind is a terrible thing to waste?' Well, for you…the mind is just a terrible thing."

"I don't follow," Claret pitched in.

"In time, my child. In time."

"Uh…okay."

"Claret, let's get out of here," Catherine whispered to her sister. "I don't like her."

Claret nodded once.

"Well, good luck out there, then."

"You will need it more than I, little one."

"Yeah, whatever lady," Claret mumbled. She and Catherine shuffled past the woman. On their way by, Catherine was able to catch a closer look at the painting. It seemed to be a depiction of a woman with angelic wings devouring another woman figure with wings of something thin and string-like that reminded her of barbed wire. The angel's teeth were sunken into the other woman's neck, and she was tearing a hunk of flesh from her throat while she screamed soundlessly. All around, demonic-faced people watched in rapt fascination.

Catherine shuddered. How could the woman have thought this painting was beautiful? She never understood art critics.

The two girls went through the door and found themselves in an x-ray room. The light had been from the wall, where a frosted pane of glass illuminated four black x-ray pages. They seemed to be x-rays of injured and fractured limbs. Claret pushed past them quickly, taking Catherine with her. Opposite of the x-rays, there was a table with scattered patient records across it. One name in particular caught Catherine's eye.

"Claret, this is…"

Catherine picked up the sheet of paper. It was faded and wrinkled as though it had come in contact with a lot of water, and the words were slightly smudged. Some words were blacked out with ink. Some were completely unreadable, but Catherine pieced the words together as best as she could and read to Claret aloud:

_Patient Number --_

_Name: Abigail J--ne Dennison_

_Social Security Number: --_

Age: --

_Notes: _

_Patient has been improperly diagnosed with epilepsy. Cause of seizures remains unknown. Chromosome samples from kidneys show drastic differences when compared with samples taken from liver. It is possible that this is a result of tetragametic chimerism. _

"What…? What is that?" Claret asked curiously.

"I'm not sure…" Catherine sounded out the words again slowly. "Te-tra-ga-me-tic chi-mer-ism. It doesn't ring any bells."

"I wonder if we might be able to find out about that. I never knew that mom had seizures, either. Maybe that's where you got it from."

"Yeah, I knew that already."

"What?" Claret asked, her temper flaring. "Why didn't you guys ever tell me about this stuff?"

Catherine hesitated, staring blankly at her sister.

"Why?" Claret demanded again.

"I didn't think it mattered," Catherine replied. Claret fought down the urge to slap her sister, and instead turned her back and began to study the other medical records on the table.

"Hey, look. Here's one for that woman we just talked to. The creepy one."

"Helen?" Catherine asked.

"Yeah, that one. It says the same thing…that tetragametic chimerism thing."

"I wonder what it means," Catherine asked aloud.

"Well, it's probably best that we move on for now. I don't want to stay anywhere too long," Claret said warily.

"Yeah," Catherine agreed.

The two set off in the direction they'd come from, as there were no other doors to go through. Cautiously, they reentered the room with the painting, but the woman was gone. Only the ominous painting, gurney and trash can remained. Even more guardedly, the two went through the door before that and once again entered the basement hallway. Something about it was very different now.

"What the hell?" Claret said aloud.

The walls were alive. They were covered with rust-colored patterns of creeping worm-like shapes. It wasn't only the walls. The floor and ceiling were moving with them too. Catherine began to breathe in short, heavy pants.

"Oh my god, Claret. Oh my god. The…it's…it's alive. Look, I told you! It's alive!"

"Jesus," Claret whispered, looking around them. The creeping things never seemed to move outside of the wall, as though they were stuck behind a very thin piece of glass. Still, they kept on moving, and Claret could even _hear _them moving. The air seemed almost to have a pulse. It was practically vibrating with tension and heat.

"Let's just go," Catherine said sharply. She was trying to stay calm.

Behind them, the hallway was dark. Ahead of them, it was equally dark. It seemed to stretch on forever, though somewhere up ahead, the women knew it had to turn at the edge of the building. Claret took Catherine's arm, but Catherine tugged it away. She couldn't be touched, not when the walls were so close. They began to walk forward, toward the southwest edge of the hospital. The shadows seemed to press in on them, as though any moment, hands would erupt from the wall and suck them into the nightmare hospital somewhere from which there would be no return.

Something moved ahead. Catherine had the .9mm drawn before Claret even had a chance to demand it. She clutched it firmly in both hands and crept forward.

"I don't want to see it," Catherine whimpered softly to her sister. Claret clenched her hands into fists, hating feeling helpless.

"Give me the gun, Catherine," Claret said.

"No!" Catherine hissed. "I know what you're thinking! I can shoot fine!"

"Catherine, give me the gun!"

"No!" she repeated. Her hands gripped the textured siding of the weapon defensively.

Claret reached for the gun, and at that moment, there was a sickening howl. What appeared to be a starved, burnt dog leapt at them from the concealing darkness. It caught Claret fully across the chest and knocked her over. She could feel its foul breath on her face as its jaws snapped, and she swung her arms ferociously, struggling to fend the animal off. Catherine stumbled back helplessly. She would have to find some way to fight the dog, or she would have to risk shooting her sister.

"Shoot it, Cat! God damn it, shoot the fucking thing!"

"I can't!" Catherine screamed. "I'll shoot you!"

"Shit!" Claret cried, and she screamed as the animal's jaws closed around her forearm. Its sharp canines broke past the skin.

Catherine finally sprang forward and landed a kick to the thing's ribs that rewarded her with a terrible crunch. It released its hold on Claret and collapsed to the ground, scrambling to regain itself. Claret struggled to her feet, clutching her injured arm to her chest. When she looked up, Catherine was unloading two, three, four shots into the thing's eyeless head.

"Stop shooting, Catherine!"

Catherine looked at Claret, then back to the dog, and abruptly stopped shooting. The dog lay twitching in a growing pile of the putrid red-black blood.

"What the hell is it?" Catherine asked, keeping her distance.

"It looks like a dog to me." Claret said it as though this were the obvious answer.

"It looks like Bones," Catherine said tremulously, ignoring her sister's sarcasm. "Remember? The skinny old dog from the school?"

Claret ignored the comparison.

"Damn it…that thing got me good…I can't move my hand."

"Let me see," Catherine said, and she leaned close to Claret. She winced. The flesh had been bitten so deeply that the dog's teeth had grazed the bone. Fresh, red blood was trickling down Claret's arm. Catherine slid her scarf off of her neck and wrapped it around the injury, tying it off tightly. It looked ridiculous and felt heavy, but it staunched the bleeding.

"Thanks," Claret said dully. She was pale and looked exhausted from the confrontation.

"So you believe me about the monsters now?" Catherine couldn't help but ask.

"Yes, Catherine," Claret said, giving her a look. "Obviously, I have no choice but to believe you. The question is, how did they get here, and what happened to everyone?"

"Maybe there was some sort of chemical spill."

"Maybe, but most of that kind of thing relates to birth defects, not living creatures. Maybe there's some sort of disease or something…"

Catherine sighed. Her arm ached sympathetically for Claret's injury. It was something Catherine was used to. Whenever one of them was hurt, the other hurt a little too.

"I hate to say it, but I think you were right. We need to keep moving," Catherine said.

"You're awfully calm all of a sudden," Claret replied.

"Well, I'm no good to you when I panic…it shouldn't have taken me so long to fight that thing off."

"It's alright," Claret said, and something about her voice told Catherine that the topic wasn't one she wished to discuss.

Once Catherine was sure that the dog was dead, she and Claret made their way down the hall without further conflict. Up ahead, there was a dim light above a set of double-doors. Catherine tried them, but they were locked. She dusted ash off of the plate on the door.

_Psychiatric Patients Ward_

"HELL no," Claret said. "We definitely do not want to be in there. God knows what could be lurking."

"Yeah, I agree," Catherine said.

They continued on, passing the sharp turn where the hallway lead south. They followed it past several locked doors on both sides of the hallway, until at last, they came to one at the furthest position south. There was mold around the edges of the door, and something that looked like vines…or veins. Even more interesting to them was the symbol that had been painted onto the door with red paint. It smelled fresh.

"What is this?" Catherine asked her sister. Claret stared at it hard, and her head began to grow fuzzier by the moment.

"Catherine…" Claret said, her eyes half-closed. "I don't like it. It makes my head feel funny."

"Don't look at it," Catherine said, studying the symbol. It was comprised of strange runes and circles.

"Cat…"

Catherine turned to look at her sister. The darkness behind Claret moved. As Catherine's eyes widened, the color drained from her face and she opened her mouth to scream. Before the sound could emerge, Claret felt it.

There was a searing, white-hot pain through her abdomen. There was a sickening crunch of bone and a splash of blood, and she looked down at her stomach to see one of the arm-blades of the Devil, gore-covered and sticking out of her torn flesh. Claret looked up into Catherine's eyes.

"Run," she whispered breathily.

Catherine screamed with all her strength and half-turned her face. She couldn't watch what he was going to do to her, but she couldn't look away. Claret's words flashed through her mind.

_I'm always be here, okay?_

Catherine felt the cold steel of the .9mm in her hand and she pointed it at the Devil's chest. She fired several rounds, and each time, she heard the wet slap of the bullets penetrating his parched leathery skin. He jerked with the impact, but it didn't stop him. He drew back his arm, holding Catherine's skewered twin out in front of him. He was going to decapitate her.

Catherine tilted the barrel of the gun upwards and shot a bullet through the Devil's blindfolded eye, and at last, he dropped his arm. Claret slid off of the blade and collapsed to the ground, stark white and face-down. Catherine tried to shoot again, but the gun clicked. The clip was empty.

"Claret," Catherine sobbed, wrapping her arms around Claret's chest, half-dragging her backwards. The Devil stood near them, overshadowing them as Catherine desperately tried to rescue her sister from him.

"J-just run…Cat…just…"

"No! I won't leave you!" Catherine turned her head up and looked up at the Devil. She was staring at him hatefully. "Leave us alone!" She screamed at him.

And just like that, he turned and walked away. As he did, he walked with his arms outstretched, spanning the distance of the hallway from wall to wall. He sliced the walls with his razor-sharp arm blades while he walked so that Catherine and Claret could hear him every step of the way, and the screams of the things in the walls as he disappeared into the darkness.

Claret's eyes rolled back. She tried to move, but her body wouldn't respond. The blade had severed her spine and as blood flowed furiously through the open wounds in her body, Catherine could feel her slipping away.

"No! Claret, please…hold on…just don't leave me…"

Claret looked up at Catherine as if seeing something beyond her.

"Mama?" she whispered.

And then she was gone.


	10. She's Gone

Catherine stared in a mixture of panic and shock at her fallen sister, now lying lifeless and pale, her glazed blue eyes staring up into empty nothingness. She had tried shaking Claret once or twice, but Claret wasn't breathing and when Catherine checked, she had no pulse. She'd bled out onto the floor, and as Catherine gazed down at the pool of deep crimson surrounding her sister's form, she realized that her jeans were saturated with her twin's blood.

A surge of raw, bitter emotion sprang into her heart all at once. First, there was overwhelming grief. Catherine sobbed like a wounded animal and clutched her sister's cold cheek against her forehead. She couldn't believe that after ten years of not speaking, it would end like this. Never again would she be able to fight with her pompous, high-class sister. Never again would she return to the Wishing Stone to talk about her secrets with Claret. Never again would Claret's blue eyes focus on her reproachfully for something shameful she had done. That thing…whatever it had been, demon or monster, it had snatched Catherine's last chance for reconciliation with her sister right out from under her. The nightmare she was living slowly crept up on the grief, and the pain gave way to a new sensation: fear.

Ferocious and nibbling, the fear began to spread throughout her nervous system like an infectious disease. It began with chills that made her skin crawl and a clammy cold sweat. Catherine felt as though she were tangled amidst the sheets in the middle of a nightmare fashioned somewhere between her greatest fears and her darkest memories. Like a distant scream approaching her with the force of a speeding freight train, she felt the pound of adrenaline in her veins and the twist of her insides writhing and crawling within her like the creeping things in the walls, ceiling and floor. Catherine was beyond repulsion with the sullied walls of the forbidden Otherworld. She was beyond hatred for whoever or whatever was puppeteer, pulling and manipulating the strings in this sinister show.

Claret was gone. Mama was gone. These were facts that she knew she must face, and the cruel hell she'd fallen victim to could consume her at any moment if she didn't take Claret's advice and _keep moving_.

She slowly released Claret's body to the floor. She couldn't bring herself to touch Claret again once she had separated herself from her, even to close her icy blue eyes, which still stared out at nothing. Catherine felt an incredible emptiness followed by a supreme sense of uselessness. The only thing she had been able to do in the end was delay her sister's death, and instead of saving her, she had prolonged her pain. She almost wished that she had let the Devil decapitate her and end her misery painlessly, though it would have been much more horrifying for Catherine to witness. It would have been just as sickening as watching her mother engulfed in the flames of her burning house.

She instead turned her attentions back to the strange symbol on the door, and she stared at it hatefully. Why had Claret gone so mad when she'd seen the symbol? Had it in some way summoned the Devil to them? What did the symbol mean? She contemplated the geometric shapes and arcane runic symbols. The bright red swatches of paint formed three perfect circles surrounded by a thinner outer rim and strange runes that she couldn't understand. She knew for sure that it had something to do with the Order, for she'd seen it before and knew that it was connected to them. She felt her hatred for the cult…yes, that's what it was. Not a religion, but a fiendish, bitter cult that had driven her as a child to the brink of insanity, thanks to her father.

Catherine suddenly understood, and the realization brought no relief to her. She had remembered recognizing his aura even through the mutated shell of a monster he'd become. Yes, her father had become the Devil. But why Claret? Knowing that the Devil was a shadow of her father brought no sense of understanding for Claret's murder. Why hadn't he killed her, Catherine, instead? Why had he killed the one sister he had always loved? Catherine recalled the foreboding promise that he had once made.

_The Devil will come for you, Catherine._

She felt a fresh roil of hatred rise like a miniature supernova in her heart so that her chest was scorched with it, and it made her vision blur with red sparks. It was of little concern to her now, where this door with its strange cult symbol led. Catherine knew that without her medication, she would soon succumb to insanity within the walls of her nightmarish prison inside the basement of the Brookhaven Hospital. How long would she wander the halls before the Devil came for her? How long could she prowl along in the midst of everything obscene before another monster crossed her path and bested her now that she had no weapon? What difference did it make with Mama and Claret gone?

For the first time in her life, Catherine decided that if the memories were going to come back to her, she wasn't going to suppress them. She owed Claret that at very least. Claret hadn't forgotten about her father's death, and Catherine knew that she would have to revisit those memories too. Perhaps it might give her some bearing on her current situation. Somehow, she knew that everything that was happening had meaning, and that in some shape or form, it was all connected to her miserable, violent past. With her reckless sense of rage cooled only slightly by the wave of acceptance that overcame her, she grabbed the handle of the door with both hands and threw it open.

The door could not have possibly led to where it had, but she was there all the same. Cold red sunshine cascaded in mottled waves through the panes of stained glass that formed the high windows of the cathedral. Vermilion carpet and canvas upholstered, polished mahogany benches made aisles that were perfectly spaced apart. Brightly colored macabre paintings hung from the cracked drywall, featuring depictions of some of the Order's concepts involving grotesque monsters and scenes of brutal torture. Ghostly tapestries draped the walls, forming ornamental curtains offsetting the drab eggshell white of the walls. The Order's symbol practically glowed in the sunlight from the stained glass windows glimmering off of the marble floor before the pulpit. It was an identical picture of the place it had been in her youth. In her mind, Catherine could hear the ghastly echoes of the organ playing a somber melody, cascading off of the mahogany arches and empty confession boxes. The Order's church, in all its gruesome splendor, spilled out before her in a rich, radiant yawn.

The High Priestess stood with her back turned before the altar where golden light from candelabra played across the shadows of the largest painting in the cathedral, hung just above it. The Priestess' luxurious silver-gray hair glistened in spectral waves over her shoulders and halfway down her slender back, making her appear much older than Catherine had remembered seeing her just a few hours before. She wore the traditional draping robe-gown in an elegant shade of bright ivory that made her stand out like a vintage model among all the red- and brown-tones. As magnificent as she appeared, something about the knowledge of who and what she was made her seem like a fallen angel to Catherine.

The painting the Priestess stood beneath was similar to the one Catherine had seen inside the hospital room: the angel woman and the demon woman, the angel gorging herself on her counterpart's flesh. However, the pose was slightly different: this time, the angel girl looked less evil and more horrified, as though she could not control what she was doing, and Catherine felt sorry for the angel woman, however repulsed she was by what she was doing. The demon looked forlorn, as though she couldn't deny the pain but had long ago accepted her fate. Hordes of misshapen humanoid creatures seemed to be watching the feast, though Catherine couldn't be sure because none of them really seemed to have faces, or even heads for that matter. Slowly, Catherine looked up at the Priestess' turned back and renewed vehemence filled her heart, reflected in the tone of her voice so that when she spoke, it was like daggers slicing through the air.

"You did this," she whispered accusingly. Slowly, the High Priestess turned, and Catherine couldn't repress her gasp.

Instead of the heterochromatic eyes of the High Priestess Helen she had expected, orbs of sad, distant cobalt met hers. The woman's face was much younger, so it seemed uncharacteristic and surprising to Catherine that her hair would be so gray, especially since Catherine's last memory of the woman was when she had bright ginger hair and freckles. Now, her face was smooth and free of freckles and lines, and her complexion was light with only a slight grayish tinge to it as though she was very tired and somewhat sickly. The gown seemed to hug her slender curves in an almost repressive embrace. Lucia, as Catherine realized who she was now, seemed to have aged without truly aging, for the only thing that had changed in ten years was the color of her hair.

"Lucia," Catherine said softly. She desperately scanned her memories for snippets of Lucia, and she was rewarded with sensations that made her wish she hadn't. She remembered the familiar smell of sunflowers, an otherworldly grace that hovered about Lucia's person like a gentle mist, a horrible strangled scream, and the twist in Lucia's expression as she gazed down at the hole in her father's chest…

"Catherine," Lucia said delicately, and her voice sounded as sad as she looked. Catherine couldn't explain why her heart bled for the woman.

"I'm sorry," was all Catherine could say.

Lucia swept across the floor as if she floated above it, rebellious to the laws of gravity. She glanced down at something on Catherine's jeans and reached out a slender hand, taking hold of the gold chain that dangled from her pocket. Slowly, Lucia drew out the locket and gazed at it wonderingly, turning it over and over in her hands, regarding it as a very precious treasure.

"Where did you find this?" Lucia asked abruptly, and her face was filled with wonder, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I was lost," Catherine began dumbly. "I…I found it in the ladies' toilet in Brookhaven Hospital."

"Was anyone there?" Lucia demanded. Catherine eyed her suspiciously.

"No…I mean, not that I know of." Catherine recalled the legs under the stall door with a shudder.

"I see," Lucia said, reluctantly dropping the topic. "May I keep this?" she asked, gazing at Catherine. Something told Catherine that this wasn't really a question that she needed an answer to.

"Of course."

"Have you been praying?" Lucia asked Catherine. Catherine stared at her pointedly. At length, Lucia sighed. "I know. I understand. I won't try to force it on you."

"Thanks," Catherine said caustically.

"Catherine…listen," she said quietly, taking Catherine's hands in her own. "I haven't much time. My power in the Order as a High Priestess may have been deposed after the truth about your father and I came out, but…my power as an individual has grown. I can still influence the tides a little. I feel that I owe you that."

"Owe _me_?" Catherine said incredulously. "But…father, I…"

"I know," the Priestess said with a measure of enmity in her tone, "I know. But there was much about your father that I had not known until after his…"

"His death?" Catherine offered casually.

The Priestess took a slow, deep breath to compose herself before replying.

"Yes, before his…death. At any rate, I'm not here to discuss the details of that. I'm here to warn you."

"Warn me?" Catherine asked, her voice raising. "Warn me of what? What could be worse than what's already happened?"

The Priestess gazed at Catherine sorrowfully for several moments before finally speaking.

"Catherine, he is coming for you. There is no time."

"W-what?" Catherine asked, recoiling a little in surprise. "Time for what?"

A chorus of voices began to chatter in Catherine's head until she forced her eyes closed and strangled them out of her mind with practiced effort. _Not here,_ she thought to herself urgently, _not now._

"You will need to remember, Catherine…the truth. The truth of how things played out that night…the truth of why you're here, and why what has happened to you has happened."

"You're not making any sense," Catherine said in a choked whisper. She couldn't stand the image of Claret's lifeless eyes burned into her mind, or the heat of flames that still licked at her cheeks, searing the tears in her eyes and surfacing memories of Mama before she killed herself. She tasted copper and realized that she was biting her lip very hard.

"You must remember, Catherine," Lucia demanded, her expression begging a truth of Catherine that the torn girl wasn't sure she could bear.

"Why?"

"If you learn the answer to that, then you will know why you are here," she said emphatically, and her eyes brimmed with sorrow for the younger girl. Catherine looked up at Lucia, but the world around her began to shake as if she were experiencing the effects of a singularly violent earthquake.

"Don't leave me!" Catherine pleaded. Lucia reached out for her, but the shaking was overwhelming and Catherine was falling into endless darkness. The sound of the air siren filled her ears again. It was warning her, like Lucia was. Against what?

Darkness surrounded her, and for several moments, she wasn't sure if she was alive or…

_No…not again…_

Catherine sat up abruptly and just as quickly regretted it. Her head was pounding, and when she opened her eyes, for a moment, she wondered if she would be back in the hospital basement or in the false sanctuary of the church. She was in neither place. Instead, she found herself sitting upright with her back pressed against receptionist's counter at the front of the hospital.

Slowly, she eased herself to her feet. The world briefly spun around her, but she forced herself steady and took several deep breaths. The hospital was as silent and dark as it had been when she had first arrived, but the walls were plain, dirty white. They were not moving or alive with crawling worm-like things. The emptiness where Claret had walked beside her seemed thick and tangible, and occasionally, she thought she saw a shadow of movement from the corner of her eye, but when she looked, there was nothing but the same hospital surroundings.

As quickly as she could, she made for the doors, threw them open, and breathed in the cold, ashy air of the street outside. It was as abandoned as ever, and a thick gray mist hung over the streets like the ocean fog over a marina in the early morning. Flakes of ash rained from the sky, making a dismal sort of snow that scattered and blew across the graffiti-covered sidewalks and buildings. Silent Hill was a ghost town now, and Catherine was sure that she could almost see disfigured humanoid silhouettes hobbling through the streets.

Her first necessity was a new weapon. The .9mm still pressed faithfully against her stomach from the waistband of her jeans, but the empty clip left her with very little defense unless she was close enough to beat something with it, though she had quickly resigned herself to never being that close to one of the monsters again. She wasn't sure where she should go now, and as she contemplated her next move, something caught her eye. Bright red blotches of fresh blood speckled the sidewalk, heading away from the hospital and off into the mist. It was not the putrid fluid that the monsters emitted when she hurt them, but it was freshly oxidized and still wet. She could smell the rustic scent of it, and she knew instantly that it was from a human. The thought that someone else could be alive and hurt, needing assistance, possibly bearing a weapon that she could use, brought alarm and urgency to this new discovery. Feeling repulsed but emboldened by the need for human company in the demon-infested town, Catherine followed the blood trail around the corner of the street.

She came upon a bent stop sign and briefly lost the trail. It seemed to lessen, as though whoever had been wounded had tended to their wounds here. Still, faint droplets continued on across the street. A nervous apprehension filled Catherine's chest as she crossed the street, and she wondered if a stray vehicle might hit her. The fog was so thick that she'd never see it coming. However, nothing crossed her path as she made her way up onto the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. She was in front of a pet shop now, and she peeked into the grimy window. There were empty cages piled up on each other inside, and no sight of life within. She moved onto the next building. It was a pawn shop full of interesting trinkets, all of which would be useless to her now, but she remembered her need for a weapon and tried the door. It opened easily.

Catherine stepped inside the pawn shop. The building looked as though the owner had simply walked out one day and never returned. The sign in the window was still turned to display "We're OPEN" from the shop window, and the dusty counter looked as it must have looked whenever the town was abandoned. A brass bell gleamed dully in the faint overhead lights. All of them had gone out but for two, which hardly kept the shop illuminated. There was a back door behind the counter that was locked and wouldn't budge. Catherine walked around the aisles, dodging an old piano, stacks of ancient VHS tapes with titles she recognized from at least five or so years ago, and racks of clothes that looked to be in the process of molding and disintegrating. A solitary mannequin stood locked in what the owner must have thought was a fashionable pose, wearing a stringy blond wig and a faded sundress. One of the mannequin's arms was missing and its eyes had been blacked out with a marker, possibly the work of badly behaved youngster. Now, it made the doll look sinister.

Presently, Catherine came across a glass display case with memorabilia signed by a professional baseball player. The ball was pristine white with a neat signature on it, and an engraved plaque announced the player's name and the team that he had devoted his life to. It was the polished bat below the two items that piqued Catherine's interest the most.

Among the useless items in the pawn shop, she found a bowling ball, which she tossed on the case and shattered the glass with. As much as she regretted desecrating the professional sports legend's signed items, she was in desperate need of a weapon, and it was the first thing she came across. After several tries, she was able to dislodge the bat from the case. It was heavy, for which she was glad. It was not a hollowed-out replica, but the real thing, solid and strong. She swung it a few times to test her strength with it. It was well-balanced and easy enough to carry. She held it near the middle with one hand. The last thing she grabbed was a first-aid kit behind the counter. Inside were bandages, a disinfectant spray and a gooey antibiotic ointment. Her t-shirt was still torn in the shoulder where the nurse creature had caught her with the crowbar. She carefully peeled back the sleeve and winced as the wound oozed fresh blood. After she had sufficiently cleaned, disinfected and saturated the injury in ointment, she bandaged it and tore away the remainder of her sleeve.

A glance outside told her nothing as to how long she'd been there or what time of day it was. She only knew that somehow, she would have to find a way out before night fell. If the monsters were this bad during the day, she had no idea what kind of horrors the night would bring. With her bat in hand and her wound tended to, she stood up and left the pawn shop, emerging onto the gray street again. Again, she discovered the blood trail that led further down the street and off into the unknown. She had no idea what this journey would bring, but whatever it was…she was ready for it now.


End file.
